True Management!

Every now and then, a colleague at work announces their departure. While most people are happy that someone is moving on to achieve their dreams and goals somewhere else, more often than not, there are sad feelings in the air because this particular individual is leaving after few years of working together.

People leave the workplace for various reasons, and I could spend hours listing these reasons in such excruciating detail that would make you hate your job and quit. But, I am going to discuss just one of the reasons that good employees would choose to quit — MANAGERS!

There is a saying in the world of management and leadership:

“Employees do not leave jobs, they leave managers.”

While I am sure that this topic has been discussed to death a billion times online, I am going to address it from my own point of view, someone who took the academic route to become a manager.

Managers, good or bad, know that they possess the power to control the staff who work for them. Bad managers in particular tend to abuse this power. Hollywood has even made a cult classic film, called “Office Space,”out of this issue. Furthermore, you’ll find numerous articles and posts about the things that bad managers do in order to cause valuable and hard-working employees to quit — the article, “9 things bosses do that make great employees quit” by “Dr. Travis Bradberry,” summarizes these actions perfectly.

In my post, “The Role of Chief Digital Officer (CDO),” I mentioned how I had to change careers many times in order to avoid becoming obsolete and jobless, and how, my career evolved into project management. However, I chose the long path to achieve that goal. Unlike most people who take on a role in management, I completed a project management certificate (of eight courses) that explained every aspect of project management and leadership (i.e., how to effectively manage projects, vendors and staff, as well as the necessary soft skills required in good leadership). I also became certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the governing body of everything management in the world.

This long approach and countless hours of study and research made me realize that so many “typical” managers have absolutely no clue how to manage people. “Typical” managers tend to come into this role due to a promotion based on field experience (and incompetent managers might even fake their way into this role). Such managers believe that being a manager revolves around making sure that staff are accomplishing their work. While this idea can be true for 80% of the time, it’s the other 20% that includes being able to manage the personalities, emotions and sometimes dreams of employees that they have no idea how to do. It’s a classic 80/20 rule. Take care of the 20% to be able to achieve the 80%.

For organizations to overcome the “bad manager” syndrome and lower staff turnaround due to bad management, training programs should be implemented for those who aspire to be managers before they take on this role. Such a program will help to open up the eyes of potential managers, because, lets face it, not everyone is management material and not everyone is willing to take on the true responsibility of being an effective manager.

These management training programs should include short- to medium-term plans that will introduce them to the essentials of management, from definitions of key management concepts, ideas and tools to practical workshops that are designed to apply the acquired knowledge from these programs and ensure that management candidates have completely understood and grasped them.

Moreover, companies should give staff the power to evaluate managers. In many organizations, there is a hidden rule that, as long as managers are accomplishing their target goals, they are evaluated positively, regardless of how they (mis)managed their staff in order to achieve these goals. Usually, staff members are the last ones to be asked to evaluate their direct managers, because managers are evaluated by their seniors. This is wrong! What these rules completely omit is the simple fact that it is staff who deal with their managers on a day-to-day basis; thus, staff are the ones who know how managers truly achieve their goals. As such, staff should be the ones to evaluate the managers. It is simply a two-way path, and managers should learn to accept it.