Nobody wants to be a bad Manager

Its been busy on the personal & professional front like it always 'appears' to be , in most of our cases :-)

HR teams are busier these days , most of them trying to ensure that the Managers complete the 'task' of sending out the Annual appraisal scores of all the team members .
Don't you wonder why this gets done only with several reminders , and in the very last minute or even after the deadline. Why do Managers find it tough to complete this process and why don't they enjoy it . I mean shouldn't it be an exciting thing to do. An opportunity to mentor, groom, advice and lend a shoulder for all the team members who need support in some form or the other .

The problem is that the whole appraisal discussion is perceived as a pain as Managers don't want to give bad news, don't want to take ownership of the salary hike the employees would get and just don't want to be accountable. Then why be Managers ??

Nobody wants to be a bad Manager but unfortunately in today's environment Manager's are being set up for failure as they are not provided with the required levels of coaching & development.

After reading thousands of Exit interview and Employee satisfactions survey verbatim, we have enough data that suggests that to assist Managers become better Managers there are 9 values and 3 communications skills they need to be coached on :

9 Values:
-Ownership and accountability of situations
-Fair play
-Identifying coaching and counseling needs
-Keeping promises
-Company before the team and team before the individual
-Disagree and commit
-Asking for help
-Attention to details
-Need to know

3 Techniques in Communication Skills:
-Setting expectation
-Appreciating and praising
-Reprimanding

It may not be simple but we have to start somewhere and its only logical that the best place to start is, by grooming Managers to become better Managers

Bye Bye 2009

I wonder what 2009 will be remembered for, or will people even want to ever remember it .We at AceNgage too, had our ups and downs, more downs that ups, predictably.


Through the year I met a lot more HR heads than in the previous year. I would joke with them, that earlier they had the money to spend, but not the time, now they have the time to spend and not the money.


On a positive note, it helped us to sit back and strategise and look at what our Customers want. We then went back to the drawing board and tweaked our services and in 2009 launched our "Coaching For Manager program" & "Counselling services to Employees". Both of which have been received by our Customers well.


We are also launching our new website and I can’t tell you how excited we are about it. Hang in there and very soon you should be able to view it .