Sam said, “I can’t take this place anymore,” and he sent out his resume and nailed a great job. Sam, like many workers in the US are changing companies now. With the economic turnaround and leaders raising salaries, why are people changing jobs? The reason Sam provided was that he had no way of overcoming bad management. He added, “Some things you can control like the quality of work you perform. Other things, like ignored bad management, is like running into a brick wall every day and that is no way to build a good life.”
Worldwide, 24 percent of employees are actively disengaged, and the root of the problem sits with poor management techniques, according to the Gallup article, The Damage Inflicted by Poor Managers. Actively disengaged employees negatively affect companies in a number of areas, including in terms of company loyalty, productivity and profitability, among others. With only 13 percent of employees worldwide engaged in their positions, actively disengaged employees outnumber engaged employees 2-to-1, showing that the majority of managers are struggling to meet their employees’ engagement needs. When engagement levels slip, top leaders benefit by analyzing leadership management techniques from the top down, assess their skills, analyze department relationship dynamics and provide coaching, training and support to their leaders to improve the company as a whole.
Leadership team development tips to overcome bad management
Assess your team’s behavior.
The best way to understand where your team members currently sit is by assessing the quality of team relationship and group norms that support high performance teamwork that builds cooperation and serves corporate alignment. With the TIGERS Workforce Behavior Profile, leaders are able to identify their department’ relationship strengths and weaknesses by evaluating levels of trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. The first survey that team members complete is used as a benchmark and starting point for improvement. Along with survey results, leaders receive personalized support strategies that they can implement to improve their department culture and group norms. Over the course of several months to a few years, leaders are then given the opportunity to perform two more comparison surveys to best track both leadership and team improvement. Available for single department or small company evaluation and for larger companies that afford both a company-wide assessment that is also broken down into departments, leaders receive strategic insight for both leadership and team development that closes the revolving employment door.
Ask for training.
Managers can use all of the data tracking software available to them, but if they don’t ask for training before they find themselves in over their heads, then they will struggle and their departments do, too. In reality, most managers believe that they are doing well in their positions, so many don’t believe that anything needs to change. But this can prove to be a costly mistake for employers, as disengaged employees lead to higher turnover rates, which costs companies 1.5 times the employee’s yearly salary. When a manager is able to realistically identify both strengths and weaknesses, strengths can be used to improve weaker areas. In work culture where weakness is viewed as a defect rather than an opportunity, managers find themselves between a rock and a hard spot and this makes change difficult. However, once managers are clearly able to assess their weaknesses, they can begin to make changes to improve their skills, and a great way to do that is by asking for training that improves their team leadership dynamic.Senior leaders must encourage managers to seek training, which is a much better alternative to low employee engagement rates and management burnout.
Establish clear goals and expectations.
The best way to fail is by establishing unclear expectations of your employees. When team members don’t have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them, they are unable to meet expectations. Managers can change the conversation by clearly defining a set of goals and utilizing measurable performance indicators to track progress that affords the opportunity to recognize employee achievement. When employees are unsure of how to measure their milestones, they are frequently left feeling unmotivated. Managers who are tracking improvement know how to recognize their employees and their talents, which gives rise to appreciation. Otherwise, poor employee morale, low company loyalty and lower engagement levels follow.
Empower, rather than tell.
Many managers fall short when they falsely believe that they need to micromanage all areas of their departments. When managers micromanage their team members, they essentially tell their employees that they do not trust them to perform their core job functions. Low trust leads to lower engagement levels, as team members no longer feel passionate about their positions. Unless a manager has previously held the employee’s position and has a thorough understanding of how that work is performed, micromanagement is self-defeating producing fear-based outcomes talented employees loath. So rather than tell their employees how to complete tasks, proficient managers understand how to empower their employees with training and coaching to create their own superior solutions. Give them the opportunity to make their own decisions, and you may be surprised by how capable they truly are.
Poor human performance management skills are directly linked to employee engagement levels, and with 24 percent of employees worldwide actively disengaged, managers need to assess their own team leadership techniques and subsequent effectiveness for overcoming bad management. High turnover is a direct outcome of poor effectiveness. Department assessments that track department relationship quality give senior leaders a good look at how to support both managers and their department teams. Other team leadership strategies include: requesting training to improve team leadership performances; setting clear goals and expectations with their employees; and empowering employees with the coaching and training to make sound decisions over their own scope of work. With relationship-based team culture assessments and these other leadership team development tips, leaders can improve their management techniques and reap employee engagement rewards.
We found these additional resources to be helpful in carrying this conversation further:
- To request a sample copy of the TIGERS Company-wide and Department Behavior Profile click here
- The Damage Inflicted by Poor Managers
- TIGERS Team Behavior Profile and 360 Team Survey
- The 3 Performance-Management Mistakes You Need to Stop Making
- Slipping Engagement Levels Leaves leaders Wondering What To Do Next
- TIGERS Leadership Training
- None of the 5 Ways to Become a Truly Great CEO Is Magic
Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
TIGERS® Success Series provides a comprehensive and robust system for improving both your work environment and profitability. We specialize in workplace enrichment and employee re-invigoration management facilitation methods that builds workforce cooperation and high performance team dynamics. Scaled to grow as your organization and leadership performance grows, our proprietary Team Behavior Profile and leadership training workshops are based on the six principles we have found to be the right mix to make this happen. The six principles are Trust, Interdependence, Genuineness, Empathy, Risk and Success. Born from our many years of business, psychology, and educational group dynamic research, and subsequent four years of independent evaluation, we instill and sustain behaviors that improve work group performance and talent retention for measurable ROI.
Since 1987, TIGERS has served committed leaders who desire enhanced cooperation among departments, teams, managers and individual employees. This heightened level of cooperation leads to improved revenue, purpose, commitment and impact. Employees quit companies because they don’t get along with leaders and co-workers. Work culture refinement and behaviors that build strong relationships erase this trend remarkably fast. For more information call 1+541-385-7465 or visit https://corevalues.com .
