Thoughts on Managing, from Down Here

Most articles on being a manager or a leader-of-people are written by business professionals drawing on years of dazzling managerial experience to impart pithy, guru-type advice and penetrating wisdom. I’m not one of those. If that’s what you’re looking for, I apologize. Nothing to see here… move along now.

I’ve been an employee for roughly 30 years and of that, I was in an acting manager role for 6 months. This view I’m about to share, assuming you’re still interested, is primarily from the perspective of the person being managed.

Gallup recently determined that, when hiring managers, companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time and that only 1 in 10 people actually have the talent to manage. (Spoiler Alert: that oh-so-talented 1 in 10 might already be one of your employees but you could be searching with the wrong criteria!) Gallup identified five dimensions of manager talents and determined that very few people possess all five. Not utilizing hiring practices which identify that 1 in 10 person with the required talent can leave your workplace entrenched in a culture of employee disengagement.

This got me thinking about the various managers I’ve worked for over my career. When looking back over my decades in public service it's not hard to distinguish who the 'other 9' were. In retrospect, I can see clearly the effect a manager's talent or lack thereof had on my team and if truth be told, my own work effort and ethic.

Ask people who know me and they will tell you that I can be described as ‘driven’ at times, a person frequently willing to go above and beyond. However there has been the odd time throughout my working life, I’m ashamed to admit, where I joined the ranks of those who might be described as ‘the disengaged’. Oh, I earned my paycheque, but I had no passion to exceed expectations or build positive momentum for my employer. Why? Was it because the work itself wasn’t inspiring? Not at all. I’ve experienced being incredibly engaged then becoming disengaged in the same workplace and same position. The difference was in how my team and I were being managed. Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, and that only 13% of employees are truly engaged.

This is where I’m going to draw on my measly six month acting manager stint to pull out a hopefully, profound little nugget of wisdom: Be a team member if you want to be the team’s leader. I stumbled into the concept because uh… I was a team member when I was given the opportunity to become its leader. We remained a team after my somewhat sudden ‘elevation’ because I made an effort to stay 'lateral'. This sounds too simple to be meaningful (and maybe a little dumb, if truth be told) but please bear with me a moment.

I frequently talked with my team about what I was dealing with and sought their opinions and knowledge. This not only helped me in making quality, effective decisions but also served to engage everyone. Although the decision-making responsibility fell upon me, by constantly communicating transparently about the things that were going on and taking their opinions into account, they felt a sense of ownership in the team that motivated and energized them in our collective achievements. Everyone eagerly contributed and took initiative to move us forward as a unit. Had I chosen to stay in the position, I would have actively maintained such lateral connections with my team and managed it from the ‘ground up’, not allowing that ‘ceiling’ to materialize that some managers seem build between themselves and their staff.

In the past I have suggested to some of my managers that they try to spend a little time actually ‘alongside’ those of us they were managing. I asked if they could take an interest in the details of what we were doing and what we cared about, as well as *gasp* share with us what they were doing and what they cared about. (Because, ideally, those things should kind of line up, right?)

If your employees come at all to the conclusion that your attitude is, “I’m the manager, I’m busy in my managerial office doing managerial things which you don’t need to know about” then you are definitely not a manager who is part of your team and I can guarantee you that you have disengaged employees.

Looking back, the places I was proudest to work, where I enjoyed being truly and wholeheartedly engaged, were places where the manager(s) communicated openly and transparently. Where my coworkers and I considered the manager(s) part of our team because they actively cultivated true two-way communication instead of managing from their silos on a need-to-know basis, hoarding their managerial information because doing so presumably gave them a feeling of importance or perceived power.

At the risk of sounding defeatist, I'm mainly of a mind that managers either are the 1 in 10 who have the talent, or they’re not, you can’t train them into that 10%. They can develop skills and knowledge, but talent is innate. The point is that employers need to think more carefully about their hiring practices and what they are looking for. Talentless managers are costly in terms of the lost productivity of a disengaged workforce but also, those employees who find their satisfaction and energy in engagement, the ones you really want, will leave and go elsewhere, compounding your problem.

To sum up my personal observations from down here:

1) Good managers actually know what we do and care about it because they are wise enough to understand it should have a direct effect on what they do (or do not… there is no try).

2) To the maximum degree possible, good managers let us know what they are doing, understanding that it will always have a direct effect on what we do (for better or worse, til more fulfilling job opportunities do we part).

The thought occurred to me while interviewing for a management position, that prospective employers should be asking for not only a reference from a candidate’s senior manager, but also from the staff they've managed. It would be invaluable to know how the candidate’s talents and treatment of their staff affected the team’s communication, productivity and engagement from the team's perspective. I think this might help prevent the hiring of knowledgeable, experienced but ultimately talentless managers. Truly effective leaders know how to inspire their followers. If you want to hire a leader with talent, maybe have a look at their followers.