'Train the bosses or otherwise companies do not operate as efficiently as they should. I should have thought this was a given but it seems not, especially in building services' says Paul Braithwaite, editor of Heating and Ventilating Review.
According to research by Summitskills and followed up by industry training guru, Tony Thomas who is a visiting professor at London South Bank University, weak leadership is leading to poor performance.

Now as far as I am concerned some people are natural born leaders and some are not. Most, I would suggest, are not. However Professor Thomas suggests they can be trained to manage.

Interestingly, the armed forces take their leaders and train them in leadership, the army officer training college in Sandhurst is a case in point. Young men and women with leadership potential are trained for a year in an enclosed environment before they are let loose on the troops. For them and the squaddies it could be a matter of life and death. An officer who freezes on the frontline could kill himself and the men (and women) in his troop.

This is unlikely to happen in business. Nevertheless, a bad manager can make life unbearable for staff in the same way as a good manager can increase productivity and make the workplace somewhere staff want to be.

I consider myself to be lucky. A previous employer spent a lot of money training its potential managers off-site on week-long courses in leadership, teamwork and management and continued to train.

I was chatting to HVR's columnist Ant Wilson about this and he would disagree with the findings of the survey, especially where his company is concerned. Many of the bosses in AECOM were trained as building services engineers and, as they have come up the ladder, they have had to deal with staff and chair meetings etc. He insists the job of a building services engineer is good on-the-job training for managers.

I found the theory is all well and good but putting it into practice is hard. When I interview contractors and consultants I aways ask the training question about apprenticeships and training for MBAs etc.

But now I will be digging deeper and checking whether managers are being trained in managing their staff. However I doubt that should any manager prove to be unable to manage, he or she will be demoted. There used to be an old adage: people are promoted to one level above that at which they performed at their best. Perhaps this is because they are promoted but not trained for that higher job.

There is a recession on. Many firms do not have the amount of work they would like. Now could be a God-given opportunity to train managers to manage, but only top bosses with foresight will have the confidence to spend now for the future.