Most of us are eager to brush up on our leadership skills. (I mean, you are reading a leadership newsletter right now.) Yet we likely spend too little time thinking about how to become a better manager, according to Carter Cast, a clinical professor of entrepreneurship.

“Within a company, leaders create a vision, and managers create goals and lead their group toward common objectives related to that vision,” Cast says. “You can make a strong case that the real pulse of a company is its management layer.”

Today we’ll learn what great managers do from Cast and from Steve King, an adjunct professor of executive education.

How to Be a Better Manager

Cast and King’s advice for managers is based in part on their time in the corporate world watching teams in action. Cast, the former CEO of Walmart.com, and King, former global talent management leader at Baxter Healthcare, offer some of that advice here.

Hire well: The best managers, Cast says, take the job of recruiting and interviewing very seriously. Cast suggests creating a scorecard of the most important attributes for a position and circulating that among any employees who are part of the interview process. This should include both business deliverables, such as growth or improving efficiency, as well as behavioral competencies, such as resilience. “When you do the work up front to be crystal clear on what outcomes you’re looking for in the new role, your interviews will be much more focused and you’ll come away with a better fit in the selection process,” he says.

Establish clear goals to reduce conflict: Does your team know what its primary objectives are? And, crucially, do they know who on the team has the authority to make decisions about those objectives? If not, King says, you’re setting your team up for interpersonal conflict. People start sniping at one another for stepping on toes or blaming each other for failure. “Many managers mistake these conflicts for personality clashes,” King says. “But more often than not, what presents as a relationship problem … is the result of the manager failing to clarify the team’s goals.”

Develop your team’s talent: Being a good manager means helping your team meet its goals, but it also requires a longer-term view of individual members’ professional development. Sometimes this means having hard conversations, Cast says. He experienced this with an employee who was talented but lacked good listening skills and often talked over others. It took several difficult conversations, but the employee finally recognized his blind spot and was able to improve. Years later, the man called Cast to tell him how pivotal those conversations had been to his career development. ​​“Those conversations were so uncomfortable for both of us. But I think he realized later that I wouldn’t have gone through the discomfort if I didn’t care about his development,” Cast says.

Teams need feedback, too: It’s not just individual team members who need this feedback; teams as a whole do, as well, King explains. He suggests bringing teams together quarterly to discuss issues such as how well they are progressing towards goals, how well they’re collaborating, and how well they are adapting to changes in work processes. “The same parameters about giving good feedback apply to groups as to individuals: Be clear, concise, and specific with your comments. And make sure to come prepared with examples and plans for improvement,” King says.

You can hear more advice on becoming a better manager from King here and from Cast here.

Should You Take a Family Business Public?

Most family firms want to maintain maximum control over their business and view going public as a negative. But there are pros and cons to going public. The benefits include increased access to capital to help grow the company, and the ability to buy out disinterested shareholders, explains Jennifer Pendergast, a clinical professor of family enterprise.

To weigh the pros and cons, she offers three tips for families debating this decision:

Know why you’re considering the change: Make sure all family members understand the motivation for going public, which she says broadly falls into one of two categories: strategic adjustments or changing family priorities. Once everyone is aligned on motivation, they can focus on debating what the best decision is in order to meet the strategic or family goals.

Minimize your loss of control: Families generally fear losing full control of the business if they go public, Pendergast says. But, there are ways to minimize the risks of relinquishing control, such as ensuring that family members are well trained to take on leadership roles and board seats.

Invest in good governance: Being thoughtful about how you structure your board will pay off when you take a family business public, Pendergast says. Implementing tenure limits or mandatory retirement ages for family board seats, for instance, can help ensure that younger generations are trained and engaged.

See you next week!

—Emily Stone, senior editor
Kellogg Insight