Season 2 Episode 5 - Roly Walter (Founder, Appraisd) – “The accidental manager,… and how to help”

Roly launched online performance management system Appraisd in 2012. Since then, it has been adopted by hundreds of businesses and is used by tens of thousands of employees around the world. Roly began his career as a Business Analyst at Goldman Sachs designing global online HR tools. It was this experience that inspired him to design and launch Appraisd.

In this episode, Roly explains the term accidental manager, including the journey of an accidental manager – how does this happen – why does this happen. We focus on the UK, to see is there a cultural issue that drives people to seek managerial promotions when they would often be much happier being a valuable team contributor.

We also discuss the investment footprint of UK companies in their leadership, as research would suggest that there has been an under investment for some years. 

We explore imposter syndrome that will lead to some managers choosing to avoid some actions (performance reviews, relationship building with team members) and does internal politics play a role in some managers not wishing to seem vulnerable or being fearful of doing the wrong thing / asking an inappropriate question.

Finally, Roly offer some key advice to Senior Leaders on how to improve their management performance.