It is a well-known fact that people join organizations and leave their managers. Moreover, it is actually confirmed with different studies and researches, that bad managers are the number one cause of employees unhappiness and reason why they quit their job.
Gallup’s research shows that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores. A study of 7,272 U.S. adults revealed that one in two had left their job to get away from their manager to improve their overall life at some point in their career.
Similar findings are revealed with the poll of 2,000 people in the UK conducted by Human Resources firm Investors in People: 49 percent say that they are thinking to leave their job because of poor management – making that the most popular reason for a potential move. A National Study Conducted by Ultimate Software: there is a need for greater focus on Manager-Employee Relationships. For 93% of employees, trust in their direct boss is essential to staying satisfied at work, and over half of employees surveyed say if they aren’t satisfied at work, they can’t put forth their best effort. A good manager-employee relationship can play a significant role in retention, too: more than half of employees say they’d turn down a 10% pay increase to stay with a great boss.
But not all bosses are bad, of course. There are actually a lot of great leaders in front of great organizations. Since leading starts from the very top of an organization, then let’s have a look to the highest rated CEO’s. Did you know that everybody can rate and review their workplace and CEO at In Glassdoor? Top 100 is available at the Glassdoor site but here is the TOP 10 CEO’s rated by their people:
1. Eric S. Yuan from Zoom Video Communications
2. Michael F. Mahoney from Boston Scientific
3. Daniel Springer from DocuSign
4. Lynsi Snyder from In-N-Out Burger
5. James Downing from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
6. Corey Schiller & Asher Raphael from Power Home Remodeling
7. Charles C. Butt from H E B
8. Jeff Weiner from LinkedIn
9. Colleen Wegman from Wegmans Food Markets
10. Marc Benioff from Salesforce
So what is this that great leaders do to that make them great? I had a look at the Zoom Video Communication reviews at Glassdoor and here is what I found about Eric S. Yuan: “CEO is a great Entrepreneur with a solid vision for the company”. “Linear management structure – you can walk onto any floor, chat with any exec (even Eric our CEO) and you’ll get a response. It’s encouraged”! “Bi-weekly all hands has an anonymous Q&A that addresses any lingering beef anyone has with anything going on at Zoom. Questions are addressed live by the CEO and a lot of positive changes have come from it!” ”Eric Yuan is about as humble, nice, and hard-working as they get”. ”Eric Yuan is the real deal, smart, humble, driven like no other and truly cares and it shows in action and how he leads. You know the man by what he values from sending personal gift cards for answering questions in All hands to following up with my wife when our family was going through a hard season, to jumping on calls to provide executive exposure with prospects or current customers. Too much to say here for a review but Eric is a very special man and leader”. What was really interesting is this that almost all the reviews that I read had something great say about Eric which shows that apparently, he is doing something right since reviews are high and comments were positive.
It is clear, we do not want to have bad bosses. It is definitely really challenging to attract and retain talents so therefore here are three things that I would recommend you to do when you would want to have great leaders on board:
Recruit and Select carefully! As this Gallup article recommends, whether hiring from the outside or promoting from within, organizations that scientifically select managers for the unique talents it takes to effectively manage people greatly increase the odds of engaging their employees. Instead of using management jobs as promotional prizes for all career paths, companies should treat these roles as unique with distinct functional demands that require a specific talent set. They should select managers with the right talents for supporting, positioning, empowering, and engaging their staff.
Educate and develop your managers! Everything around us is changing constantly so therefore even the very best ones need to learn and develop. Meaning that you need to train your managers during the whole employee lifecycle not only during the induction program or when you see or hear problems rising. Even Eric, the highest rated CEO according to Glassdoor, believes that it is possible to continuously grow as a leader to fit the evolving needs of the business, as long as you are committed to continuously learn and challenge yourself. So how does he learn? He reads books!
Promote and encourage communication! Communication is often the basis of any healthy relationship, including the one between an employee and his or her manager. Gallup has found that consistent communication – whether it occurs in person, over the phone or electronically – is connected to higher engagement. For example, employees whose managers hold regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings with them. Gallup also found that engagement is highest among employees who have some form (face to face, phone or digital) of daily communication with their managers. Managers who use a combination of face-to-face, phone, and electronic communication are the most successful in engaging employees. And when employees attempt to contact their manager, engaged employees report their manager returns their calls or messages within 24 hours. These ongoing transactions explain why engaged workers are more likely to say their manager knows what projects or tasks they are working on.
Sources used in this post:
https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182321/employees-lot-managers.aspx
https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Top-CEOs-LST_KQ0,8.htm
Click to access State%20of%20the%20American%20Workplace%20Report%202013.pdf
https://blog.signifai.io/learnings-discussion-eric-yuan-ceo-founder-zoom/
https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182321/employees-lot-managers.aspx
Workplace Happiness 