In today’s professional world, all organizations are making attempts to build the best environment in the workplace. But most of them pay very less attention to one crucial aspect in building a healthy and fruitful work environment — appointing the right manager.
So you’ve promoted a manager and you are realizing over time that he/she is as bad as it gets. Now what?
You could make him/her attend various seminars, seek the help of consultants and make a long list of arbitrations but not all of these tools actually seem to work effectively in the practical world.
Most CEOs in large organizations hardly engage with their employees to know them personally or make an effort to work with the HR team to get constructively involved in therecruitment process. Those working in smaller positions hardly have any motivation to question the human resource department about various policies and aspects related to the general organizational culture. As a result, the strategies formulated or activities arranged by the HR are mostly unsuccessful.
Research studies on global workplace culture
However the effects of this indifferent attitude and inefficient workplace environment have become a bit of a concern lately. Recent research studies revealed that in the United States, professionals who feel a sense of involvement in the workplace constitute only 20-30 percent of the total employees and this percentage is even lower worldwide. In fact, these figures have hardly changed in the last 12 years which means that most of the employees globally have experienced no growth and are barely able to contribute at their workplace.
The reason behind this has been attributed to the fact that managers are responsible for 70 percent of the deviation in the scores of employee engagement. In such cases when the managers are taught skills in employee management, there will be scope for immense development within various teams and the organization will be able to add to its customer base, while also pleasing existing customers. When managers lack these basic managerial skills, employee development halts and all the teams fail achieve results effectively.
The most frightening revelation of the study was that in almost 82 percent of the cases, companies are mostly unsuccessful in selecting the right candidate with the desired skills and talent. The fact is that large amounts of time, effort and resources are being wasted by such companies in trying to provide training to bad managers and mould them into individuals that they are actually not. The truth is that you cannot fix the inappropriate selection of a candidate for a managerial post.
Many organizations are unaware that skilful management is essentially a very rare talent. In fact research shows that only one in 10 managers is gifted with this natural talent of managing a team or department effectively. Talk about the outstanding proportion of bad bosses in the workplace.
These gifted managers are brilliant at motivating each employee working in a team. They undertake performance reviews, build good relationships, deal with challenging situations and also take unbiased decisions based on the productivity of an employee.
On the other hand, a manager who lacks such talent will not be able to effectively deal with the various issues in a skilful fashion and will take the aid of tools such as manipulation and unhealthy politics to work his/her way around.
Bad Managers don’t pay attention to communication
One of the key aspects of leadership is the clear communication of objectives and overall vision of the company to the various teams. Poor communication skills, the inability to take feedback and rigidity towards fresh ideas hinder this mutually benefitting process. Bad managers hardly engage in talking casually with employees and very often show no empathy towards them which is crucial to building a healthy relationship.
How could you fix a bad manager? What insight can you share?
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