Impact of Great Managers on Business Outcomes

Good managers are defined by their continuous efforts to keep their teams productively engaged which results in high performance. They are able to successfully motivate each and every member of their team to take responsibility for their own and the team’s performance as a whole. The outcome- building an organization that is high in productivity and profitability.

However, the stark reality of the situation is that very less managers can be graded as ‘good managers’ who are able to keep their teams productively engaged. In fact, studies show that only one in ten managers are effective team builders. Moreover, employees across the globe state ‘managerial behavior’ as their biggest source of workplace stress.

No wonder 87% of the global workforce is disengaged and not contributing to organizational success. This horrifying statistic from Gallup can be traced right to managers who are responsible for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. And what is worse, these numbers have hardly improved in the last decade meaning that organizations have failed miserably in hiring or developing great managers who can lead their team efficiently.

High employee engagement is directly linked to higher employee productivity, organizational profitability, lesser absenteeism, lower turnover and overall better and safer work culture

To ensure high employee engagement, companies need to ensure that every team is led by a competent manager who understands the needs of their team accurately. Great performing teams are high on motivation and morale and guess who is responsible for keeping a team’s spirit high-the manager.

So the question arises, how to find a great manager?

This is because most of the hiring decisions are based on past performance or tenure and not on the talent that the candidate possesses to manage and motivate people.

Poor hiring practices are costing organizations billions annually in hiring costs and lost organizational profitability.

By making use of Psychometric assessments during hiring, organizations can base their selection on a safe and trustworthy criterion — innate competencies, rather than the relatively irrelevant and unreliable managerial performance indicators like past performance, tenure or domain knowledge and skills.

Psychometric assessments help in assessing the innate cognitive, behavioral and personality related competencies that are present in an individual in an accurate and unbiased fashion. This helps in identifying if a candidate possesses qualities that are required to lead a team efficiently and keep the team members sufficiently motivated and engaged.

Click Here to Know Everything About Psychometric Tests

Developing Great Managers

Every organization has managers with the capacity of being great. However, that potential is untapped unless they are trained and developed to unleash their talent.

Tapping this potential requires knowledge about the innate competencies that the managers possess. Psychometric assessments can help in identifying the cognitive and behavioral competencies and personality type of a manager. This knowledge is crucial to understand if a manager possess the right temperament and skills to lead their team. In case the manager falls short on these skills, they can be trained and developed to manage their teams better by focusing on the skills that they lack and consciously working to improve them.

Role of Managers in Ensuring Organizational Success

Source: http://www.nwlink.com

This leadership matrix will help throw light on how different types of managers based on their leadership style, contribute towards/inhibit organizational success.

Impoverished: A manager who is neither concerned about the quality of work that its team is producing nor interested in the general well being of his/her team members, practices this leadership style. Such a team will be severely underperforming and face very high attrition owing to poor team dynamics and low morale. Usually, managers who are close to their retirement or thinking of quitting, adopt this leadership style as their major concern is to just hold on to their job somehow. Michael Scott from ‘The Office’, played by Steve Carell is a great example of Impoverished Leadership.

Authoritarian: A manager whose primary focus is work quality and does not care much about the well being of his/her team members, follows this leadership style. Such teams, although high performing in the short run, usually run out of gas and their performance falls owing to bad work culture which results in high attrition. However, this leadership style is effective for teams which are involved in performing pioneering and groundbreaking work which is very challenging and impactful. Steve Jobs is a perfect example of a leader who practiced ‘’Authoritarian leadership’ style. He made his team work 100+ hours per week to make them come up with new technologies and devices that were first of their kind.

Team Leadership: A manager who has equal concern for people and performance follows this leadership style. This is the most effective leadership style. Carlos Ghosn, the chairman, and CEO of Renault follows the ‘Team Leadership’ style of managing people. He empowers his employees to take decisions and motivates his employees to perform better .

Socialite: A manager who values people above work follows this leadership style. This leadership style is also known as ‘Country Club’ leadership style. In organizations where the clientele is very exclusive and the primary role of employees is to provide comfort and luxury to their customers, this leadership style is used. Richard Branson, CEO of the Virgin group follows this leadership style. He is always very generous with his employees and ensures that they have a good time working for the company.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, an organization needs to identify the leadership style of a manager and mould it to suit the requirement of the team in order to get the best results. In order to achieve this, we need to assess the behavioral and personality traits that a candidate possesses to gauge the kind of leadership style he/she is likely to follow. Psychometric assessments are best suited to help HRs and hiring managers get hold of this information. Once a candidate’s predominant leadership style is identified, HRs and hiring managers can use this information to check if the candidate’s leadership style will match the team’s requirement.

Psychometric assessments can also help in alignment of the innate leadership style of existing managers and molding it to get the best out of the team that they are managing.

Originally published at https://blog.mettl.com on January 16, 2019.