E325 | How Competent Managers Enhance Workplace Efficiency with Farley Thomas
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In this conversation, Farley Thomas, the co-founder and CEO of Manageable joins today’s conversation and shares his revolutionary insights on empowering organisations through highly skilled management.
Farley highlights the incredible impact of upskilled, confident, and competent managers on organisational success, and why traditional training methods often fall short, diving into the practical approaches his company adopts and drawing fascinating parallels between language learning and workplace skills training.
Farley also unpacks the critical importance of practice and real-world application in management training, supported by eye-opening examples and personal experiences. From the harmful effects of untrained management on employee well-being to innovative solutions like the Leadership Capacity Profile, this episode is packed with actionable insights that challenge conventional leadership development, advocating for early-career focus and continuous learning that can transform the future of work.
Takeaways
- The concept of Empowerment and the importance of skilled management.
- Ineffectiveness of traditional training and the importance of practice over theoretical knowledge.
- The Impact of poor management on employees and Manageable’s approach on managers training.
- Differences between Managers and Leaders.
- Evaluating leadership capacity- a hypothetical scenario for discovering leadership potential among contributors.
- Skill development and behavioural change through practice.
- Redefining leadership and management roles- reallocating training resources towards early career managers.
About Farley Thomas
Farley Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of Manageable, the leadership-skills-focused EdTech firm on a mission to give everyone the gift of a great manager.
Prior to founding Manageable in 2020, Farley established a highly successful executive coaching and leadership advisory practice in 2014. He has been advising and coaching CEOs and their teams across diverse industry sectors ever since.
The core of his previous corporate experience was gained at HSBC, where he was CRO at HSBC Asset Management for over a decade, ultimately setting up and leading teams in over 30 countries worldwide. He has consistently been trusted to develop new initiatives, products and markets.
Follow Farley Thomas
Book Recommendations
The Geek Way by Andrew McAfee
Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall
Quick Fire Questions
Q: What drives you every day?
Farley Thomas: The idea that we are going to improve the future of work.
Q: What’s your genius?
Farley Thomas: Gosh, that’s for somebody else to tell me, Dom. But what people have told me is that I’m a bit self conscious. I connect dots really quickly, and that’s held me in a good state.
Q: What’s the most significant risk you’ve taken?
Farley Thomas: That managers are leaders, and leaders are managers.
Q: What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken?
Farley Thomas: Giving up a very well-paid corporate job in pursuit of my entrepreneurial dreams. In terms of happiness, it is paying off. I would never go back.
Q: How do you measure success in life?
Farley Thomas: How present I am in each conversation I think is a really good measure of success because it means that you’ve got enough bandwidth, you’re not super stressed. But that’s the daily battle.
Q: What’s the most recent thing you’ve learned or a new skill you’ve acquired?
Farley Thomas: You know, people talk about dulcet tones. Well, I always thought that was spelt D U L C E T. But I’ve discovered, I’ve discovered there is a legitimate alternate spelling of the word, which is D U L C E T. And I just thought plink, you know, wow, I’m learning these sorts of things every single day.
Other than that – I have recently abandoned squash and decided that my days of playing squash on tennis courts must come to an end and I need to learn tennis properly. So I’m working on that.
Q: What’s the worst business advice you’ve received?
Farley Thomas: It was something along the lines of, you need to hire this role. And that was the thing that I was best at myself. Luckily, somebody else came along who’s currently an advisor to Manageable, Louis Warner. He said, ‘You know what, Farley? Why on earth would you substitute yourself, who’s best at this thing, for this other thing, for this other person when they’ll always be in your shadow?’ So I think this is especially relevant in the earlier stages of an organisation’s development. But I guess the flip of your question is to try to keep doing what you’re really good at, what you have an edge at, instead of bringing somebody in, and then you do less of what you’re good at.
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