The cost of your bad managers
They're just not "people" people, but maybe they could be?
Tolstoy once wrote:
‘All good managers are alike; each bad manager is bad in their own way.’
Based on the findings of our ‘Building Better Managers’ report, that’s undoubtedly true.
Last year, our team of behavioral scientists conducted an in-depth literature review into the key skills that all managers require to perform effectively in their roles. They then bolstered this analysis with a 2,000-person survey, as well as interviews with managers and L&D professionals.
What they found is that there are 12 key management skills that have the biggest impact on individual, team and organizational performance - no matter the industry or territory those managers work in.
Crucially, these skills are foundational. Less about how you make decisions or have a difficult conversation, and more about how managers can create an environment where everyone succeeds.
Absent these skills, even well-intentioned managers wreak havoc.
Here’s how:
❤️ When managers lack empathy, their people are 34% less innovative and 43% less engaged (Catalyst, 2021).
🪞 When managers lack self-awareness, their people are less loyal to the organization (Zamahani & Rezaei, 2014).
👀 When managers lack social sensitivity, team performance and satisfaction suffers (Bender et al., 2012).
💪 When managers lack trust, employee turnover increases (Brower et al., 2009).
🎉 When managers are not inclusive, psychological safety disappears (Carmeli et al., 2010).
🏆 When managers fail to provide recognition, it affects employee wellbeing, retention and commitment (Upadhyay, 2018).
👂🏼 When managers fail to demonstrate active listening, their team’s job insecurity increases (Kriz et al., 2021).
📣 When managers fail to provide guidance on how to develop, job satisfaction, retention and engagement suffer (Hollar et al., 2022).
⚽ When managers lack coaching skills, employee engagement slips (Ladyshewsky & Taplin, 2018).
🎤 When managers don’t demonstrate transparent communication, employees evaluate their organizations less favorably (Men, 2014).
🎯 When managers lack goal setting skills, employee happiness, commitment and sales performance suffers (Steinmann et al., 2018). So, too, does sales performance (Crossley, Cooper & Wernsing, 2013).
🔧 And, finally, when managers lack delegation skills, job satisfaction and performance are affected (Schriesheim et al. 1998).
Think of the worst manager you ever had.
Which skills were most lacking in that manager? If you have a minute, score them on a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (amazing) for each of the skills outlined above.
Total your scores, then ask yourself this question: How would they score themselves?
Most managers have no idea how effective they are at demonstrating each skill. And, if we’re honest, the worst managers are probably the least equipped to answer accurately.
So, to help managers identify where they need to improve, we need an assessment that offers an objective insight into skill level – rather than self-reported confidence or subjective feedback from others.
That’s why we built out Manager Skills Assessment: an innovative new tool that tests individual capability through a series of mixed method questions.
Managers who complete the MSA receive a personalized report that highlights their skill gaps.
While L&D teams who administer the MSA receive an aggregate report, giving them an organization-wide insight into gaps across their management population.
Every bad manager may be bad in their own way but, by helping them reflect on where they can improve, we can start to make a difference for those people who report to them.
Want to share your thoughts on this week’s newsletter? Then get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
🎧 On the podcast
In last week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, we explored sales enablement from the perspective of sales and marketing teams. But where do product teams fit in? Beyond building products, what role do these teams play in generating revenue?
For the second instalment in our two-part series on sales enablement, Ross D and Lara are once again joined by Darren Bezani, Chief Salecologist at Salecology, to discuss:
why it’s important to involve product teams in sales enablement;
the behaviors we want product teams to demonstrate;
how L&D can support this, beyond simply providing training.
Check out the episode below. 👇
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com
📖 Deep dive
In this week’s edition of The L&D Dispatch, we wanted to provide a high-level overview of the impact that bad managers have on their people and organizations.
We chose to do this because, in our conversations with clients, the same three problems keep coming up:
1. “Our managers are promoted because of technical ability, not people skills.”
2. “We have no idea how effective our managers are.”
3. “We’re running a management development program but have no idea if it’s working.”
When we then discuss the 12 key skills that we know make a difference, we often then get asked: “Why these skills? Why not decision-making, psychological safety or difficult conversations?”
We want to answer this question in the coming weeks by diving deeper into each skill area.
Over the next 12 weeks, we’ll cover each skill, one ‘Deep Dive’ at a time. We’ll explore the impact these skills have on team performance, engagement, commitment and wellbeing.
And we’ll offer ideas, based on the literature, for how managers can demonstrate these skills to make a measurable difference to these outcomes.
If that sounds useful to you, make sure to subscribe now! And if you’ve already subscribed, why not forward this newsletter to whoever in your organization is responsible for management development?
We think it’s going to be a fun ride, and we hope that you’ll join us on the journey!
Mindtools (2024). Building Better Managers.
👹 Missing links
Long-term readers will know that I’m a big fan of nudge theory: the idea that small changes to how we present choices have a major impact on our decisions. Now a paper from Ruth Schmidt, Associate Professor at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology, argues that the effect of tweaking ‘choice architecture’ is undermined when we ignore ‘choice infrastructure’. Or, to put it simply, you can nudge people to make better choices by tweaking the language in a letter (architecture), but have a bigger impact if you consider how the standards, processes and cultural context help frame that choice in the first place (infrastructure).
Hat tip to Matt Furness, who posted the paper on LinkedIn.
One of the difficulties we face in L&D is proving the impact of what we do, but that isn’t helped when we limit our scope to purely financial metrics. In this article for People Management, our colleague Dr Gent Ahmetaj argues that learning leaders can improve their organization’s growth, productivity and performance by targeting the intangibles: the wellbeing, psychological safety and skill development of the people they support.
🤖 The truth is… in this tiny computer?
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been watching The X-Files start to finish (217 episodes, two movies). I have one episode left. But I wanted to link to the season 11 episode ‘Rm9sbG93ZXJz’ because I think it’s the scariest of the bunch. It depicts Mulder and Scully in an AI-driven hellscape, where failing to tip your robot kitchen staff leads to an ongoing assault from driverless cabs, flying drones, automated alerts and an internet-enabled fridge. The episode struck a chord because, on a trip to London last week, I was woken every 30 minutes in my hotel room by motion activated disco lights. Never mind “I want to believe”, I just wanted to sleep.
The episode is available on Disney+ in the UK.
👋 And finally…
I’ve long been a fan of the “cheap thrill”: the pointless lolz you give yourself to make the days more bearable. Recent examples include my lunch time dog walk, where I challenge myself to throw a dog poo bag into a bin from ever-greater distances. Or the fact that my new trainers are stencilled with the names ‘Frodo’ and ‘Sam’, because they’re going to be doing a lot of walking.
Anyway, I was delighted to see that I’m not the only one.
Runner Duncan McCabe spent 10 months and 700 miles creating this 27-second video clip. He is my hero.
👍 Thanks!
Thanks for reading The L&D Dispatch from Mind Tools! If you’d like to speak to us, work with us, or make a suggestion, you can email custom@mindtools.com.
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