Charlotte County Florida Weekly

Have your employees had enough?

Employees don’t quit jobs; they quit their bosses. Tips for ways managers can create a positive culture.

 

 

WHY DO PEOPLE LEAVE THEIR JOBS? Study after study shows the main reason employees jump ship is a bad manager. And while you might think of a “bad boss” as one who sexually harasses employees or terrorizes them with a hair-trigger temper, it’s rarely that extreme, says James Manktelow. “Bad (and mediocre) bosses usually have good intentions; they’re just poorly trained,” he adds.

The coauthor along with Julian Birkinshaw of “Mind Tools for Managers: 100 Ways to Be a Better Boss,” Mr. Manktelow says managers have a hand in almost every aspect of how employees perceive their job, “from how meaningful the work is to how stressed out they are to how supported and appreciated they feel.”

In other words, being a good boss is a tall order. Indeed, Mr. Manktelow says management is an “unnatural act” because it requires us to behave in a way that goes against our innate desire to be in control and the center of attention. Doing a good job of it requires good training, the right tools and lots of feedback — and very few managers get these things.

 

 

“Mind Tools for Managers” includes the 100 most important skills for a manager or leader to master. These skills were identified in a survey Mr. Manktelow, the founder and CEO of www.mindtools.com, and Mr. Birkinshaw, deputy dean for programs at London Business School, conducted of 15,242 managers and professionals worldwide.

Here are a few of their tips for what you can do to create the kind of workplace culture that will attract the best and brightest — and just as important, keep them from leaving.

¦ Work effectively with people from different generations – While you shouldn’t overemphasize the differences between baby boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials, neither is it a good idea to ignore them. For instance, if you are a baby boomer managing a group of Millennials, don’t resist their preference for working virtually or through microblogging sites (they think email is very old school), and be more proactive in giving recognition and praise.

¦ Learn to listen carefully and intensely to employees – In their survey, the authors found that 65.9 percent of managers think careful listening is one of the most important methods you can use to understand and motivate people. It helps you understand what upsets the people who work for you so you can help clear these things away. It also helps you appreciate what excites and energizes them so you can help them shape their work in this direction. Active listening — where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words another person is saying but to understand the complete message being sent — helps make employees feel heard.

“Being a good listener to your employees doesn’t just happen,” Mr. Birkinshaw says. “You have to structure opportunities for this into the day.”

¦ Give effective praise and recognition – The authors discovered that 54.8 percent of survey responders see giving praise as one of the most important ways of getting the best from their people. They also point out that Gallup has identified significant increases in helpfulness, cooperation, punctuality, attendance and length of service associated with receiving regular praise.

Walk around looking for opportunities to give praise. Be specific about what you’re praising and do it in an appropriate way, knowing that some people love public praise while others are embarrassed by it. And be sure that praise is honest and proportionate. Insincere praise will weaken trust.

¦ Help people develop self-confidence – People want to feel good about themselves and their abilities, and they want to be successful at work. When you build your employees’ self-confidence, you’ll help them achieve both goals. One good strategy is to create “mastery experiences” for them. You set small goals for them that allow them to demonstrate to you and themselves that they have mastered a skill — then you can move on to set progressively harder challenges.

¦ Engage their passion with transformational leadership – To get the very best work from someone, you must engage their passion and sense of meaning in life. This is what truly keeps people at their jobs. In “Mind Tools for Managers,” the authors cite the concept of transformational leadership, which was first introduced by James Mac- Gregor Burns in his 1978 book, “Leadership.”

He defined transformational leadership as a process where “leaders and their followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation.”

Bernard M. Bass developed the concept of transformational leadership further in his 1985 book, “Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations.” Mr. Manktelow and Mr. Birkinshaw recommend following Mr. Bass’ four main directives for becoming a transformational leader: lead by example, stimulate people intellectually, help your people grow as individuals and inspire them with a compelling vision of the future.

¦ Handle poor performance right away. Don’t let it fester – When you don’t deal with poor performers, it puts a lot of pressure on other team members. This can cause high performers to leave. No wonder the authors’ survey found that 57.7 percent of managers see dealing with poor performance effectively as a highly important management skill. Poor performance has two basic sources: low motivation and low ability. There are many ways to deal with the former, including smart job structuring, support, feedback and coaching. For ability issues they recommend the Five Rs of Performance Improvement outlined by David Whetten and Kim Cameron in their book, “Developing Management Skills.” The Five Rs are: Resupply, Retrain, Refit, Reassign, Release.

The same skills that collectively make a person a great boss also create a deeply engaging culture that nurtures and excites employees, Mr. Manktelow says.

“You might even call it an unquittable culture,” he adds. “This is the Holy Grail for any company — and not just during times when a talent war is heating up. No company can outperform competitors if its employees just don’t want to be there.”

The good news? People are less likely to leave great bosses. ¦

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *