12 The Elements Of Great Managing Pdf
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In 12: The Elements of Great Managing, authors Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter discuss the most important characteristics of a successful manager. The authors include advice such as:. Managers, not top-level executives, are the most critical for motivating and guiding employees. Managers should harness the power of fun.
12 The Elements Of Great Managing Pdf Template
Less than are engaged in their jobs in any given year. This finding has remained consistent since 2000, when Gallup first began measuring and reporting on U.S. Workplace engagement. Gallup defines engaged employees as those who are involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. But the majority of employees are indifferent, sleepwalking through their workday without regard for their performance or their organization’s performance.
As a result, vital economic influencers such as growth and innovation are at risk. Gallup’s latest report, provides an in-depth look at what characterizes great managers and examines the crucial links between talent, engagement, and vital business outcomes such as profitability and productivity. Our research shows that managers account for as much as in employee engagement scores. Given the troubling state of employee engagement in the U.S. Today, it makes sense that most managers are not creating environments in which employees feel motivated or even comfortable. A Gallup 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.
Having a bad manager is often a: Employees feel miserable while at work, and that misery follows them home, compounding their stress and negatively affecting their overall well-being. But it’s not enough to simply label a manager as “bad” or “good.” Organizations need to understand what managers are doing in the workplace to create or destroy engagement. In another study of 7,712 U.S. Adults, Gallup asked respondents to rate their manager on specific behaviors. These behaviors – related to communication, performance management, and individual strengths – strongly link to employee engagement and give organizations better insights into developing their managers and raising the overall level of performance of the business. Communicate Richly 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 with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings with them. Gallup also finds 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 also more likely to report their manager knows what projects or tasks they are working on. But mere transactions between managers and employees are not enough to maximize engagement. Employees value communication from their manager not just about their roles and responsibilities but also about what happens in their lives outside of work. The Gallup study reveals that employees who feel as though their manager is invested in them as people are more likely to be engaged.
The best managers make a concerted effort to get to know their employees and help them feel comfortable talking about any subject, whether it is work related or not. A productive workplace is one in which people feel safe – safe enough to experiment, to challenge, to share information, and to support one another. In this type of workplace, team members are prepared to give the manager and their organization the benefit of the doubt. But none of this can happen if employees do not feel cared about. Great managers have the talent to motivate employees and build genuine relationships with them. Those who are not well-suited for the job will likely be uncomfortable with this “soft” aspect of management.
The best managers understand that each person they manage is different. Each person has different successes and challenges both at and away from work. Knowing their employees as people first, these managers accommodate their employees’ uniqueness while managing toward high performance.
Base Performance Management on Clear Goals Performance management is often a source of great frustration for employees who do not clearly understand their goals or what is expected of them at work. They may feel conflicted about their duties and disconnected from the bigger picture. For these employees, and developmental conversations feel forced and superficial, and it is impossible for them to think about next year’s goals when they are not even sure what tomorrow will throw at them. Yet, when performance management is done well, employees become more productive, profitable, and creative contributors. Gallup finds that employees whose managers excel at performance management activities are more engaged than employees whose managers struggle with these same tasks. In our Q12 research, Gallup has discovered that is perhaps the most basic of employee needs and is vital to performance.
Helping employees understand their responsibilities may seem like “Management 101” but employees need more than written job descriptions to fully grasp their roles. Great managers don’t just tell employees what’s expected of them and leave it at that; instead, they frequently talk with employees about their responsibilities and progress. They don’t save those critical conversations for once-a-year performance reviews.
Engaged employees are more likely than their colleagues to say their managers help them set work priorities and performance goals. They are also more likely to say their managers hold them accountable for their performance. To these employees, a ccountability means that all employees are treated fairly or held to the same standards, which allows those with superior performance to shine.
Focus on Strengths over Weaknesses Gallup researchers have studied human behavior and strengths for decades and discovered that building employees’ is a far more effective approach than a fixation on weaknesses. A strengths-based culture is one in which employees learn their roles more quickly, produce more and significantly better work, stay with their company longer, and are more engaged. In the current study, a vast majority (67%) of employees who strongly agree that their manager focuses on their strengths or positive characteristics are engaged, compared with just 31% of the employees who indicate strongly that their manager focuses on their weaknesses. When managers help employees grow and develop through their strengths, they are more than twice as likely to engage their team members.
The most powerful thing a manager can do for employees is to place them in jobs that allow them to use the best of their natural talents, adding skills and knowledge to develop and apply their strengths.
Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analysis suggests that they usually get it wrong.
In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time. Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company. The only defense against this massive problem is a good offense, because when companies get these decisions wrong, nothing fixes it.
Businesses that get it right, however, and hire managers based on talent will thrive and gain a significant competitive advantage. Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement.
Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that, and a. Worse, over the past 12 years these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work. Gallup has studied performance at hundreds of organizations and measured the engagement of 27 million employees and more than 2.5 million work units over the past two decades. No matter the industry, size, or location, we find executives struggling to unlock the mystery of why performance varies so immensely from one workgroup to the next. Performance metrics fluctuate widely and unnecessarily within most companies, in no small part from the lack of consistency in how people are managed.
This “noise” frustrates leaders because unpredictability causes great inefficiencies in execution. Executives can cut through this noise by measuring what matters most.
Gallup has between and vital performance indicators, including customer metrics; higher profitability, productivity, and quality (fewer defects); lower turnover; less absenteeism and shrinkage (i.e., theft); and fewer safety incidents. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better. To make this happen, companies should systematically demand that every team within their workforce have a great manager. After all, the root of performance variability lies within human nature itself. Teams are composed of individuals with diverging needs related to morale, motivation, and clarity — all of which lead to varying degrees of performance. Nothing less than great managers can maximize them.
But first, companies have to find those great managers. If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup finds that great managers have the following talents:. They motivate every single employee to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.
They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance. They create a culture of clear accountability. They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics. Gallup’s research reveals that about one in ten people possess all these necessary traits. While many people are endowed with some of them, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company’s performance.
These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers. It’s important to note that another two in 10 exhibit some characteristics of basic managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them. In studying managerial talent in supervisory roles compared with the general population, we find that organizations have learned ways to slightly improve the odds of finding talented managers. Nearly one in five (18%) of those currently in management roles demonstrate a high level of talent for managing others, while another two in 10 show a basic talent for it.
Still, this means that companies miss the mark on high managerial talent in 82% of their hiring decisions, which is an alarming problem for employee engagement and the development of high-performing cultures in the U.S. And worldwide. Sure, every manager can learn to engage a team somewhat. But without the raw, natural talent to individualize; focus on each person’s needs and strengths; boldly review their team members; rally people around a cause; and execute efficient processes, the day-to-day experience will burn out both the manager and his or her team. As noted earlier, this basic inefficiency in identifying talent costs companies hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; little science or research is applied to find the right person for the managerial role. When Gallup asked U.S.
Managers why they believed they were hired for their current role, they commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field. These reasons don’t take into account whether the candidate has the right talent to thrive in the role. Being a very successful programmer, salesperson, or engineer, for example, is no guarantee that someone will be even remotely adept at managing others. Most companies promote workers into managerial positions because they seemingly deserve it, rather than because they have the talent for it.
This practice doesn’t work. Experience and skills are important, but people’s talents — the naturally recurring patterns in the ways they think, feel, and behave — predict where they’ll perform at their best.
Talents are innate and are the building blocks of great performance. Knowledge, experience, and skills develop our talents, but unless we possess the right innate talents for our job, no amount of training or experience will matter. Very few people are able to pull off all five of the requirements of good management. Most managers end up with team members who are at best indifferent toward their work — or are at worst hell-bent on spreading their negativity to colleagues and customers. However, when companies can increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.
It’s important to note — especially in the current economic climate — that finding great managers doesn’t depend on market conditions or the current labor force. Large companies have approximately one manager for every 10 employees, and Gallup finds that one in 10 people possess the inherent talent to manage.
When you do the math, it’s likely that someone on each team has the talent to lead. But given our findings, chances are that it’s not the manager.
More likely, it’s an employee with high managerial potential waiting to be discovered. The good news is that sufficient management talent exists in every company – it’s often hiding in plain sight. Leaders should maximize this potential by choosing the right person for the next management role using predictive analytics to guide their identification of talent.
12 The Elements Of Great Managing Pdf Download
For too long, companies have wasted time, energy, and resources hiring the wrong managers and then attempting to train them to be who they’re not. Nothing fixes the wrong pick.