Leadership Fundamentals

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Part 2: The Wisdom of Great Managers

Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman sum up that wisdom very nicely in Chapter 2 of First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, a core belief they heard echoed by tens of thousands of great managers.

People don’t change that much.
Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out.
Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough.

We all recognize that individuals are unique. They may have different ways of approaching the same problem or goal, and use different skills to get to the same endpoint. Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the manager to create the synergy between the employee’s goals and talents and the company’s objectives and bottom-line in the most effective, productive way.

According to Buckingham & Coffman, it is the manager’s duty to:

• Find the right people
• Set goals/expectations
• Motivate the person
• Develop the person

These are the most important duties a manager can perform and the accomplishment of these 4 goals will establish the credentials of a great manager.

It becomes fashionable sometimes to talk about leaderless organizations and the importance of team work in being in on the decision-making process, and I don’t disagree with getting input from the whole team. But it doesn’t work as an isolated decision-making system. One of the key elements of leading is to make sure you have all the information from all the right people, in order to then make an informed decision on which way to go.

The book discusses a failed attempt by a hotel industry executive, who believed [wrongly] that self-management teams would be an effective way to develop more and more skills in individuals. Instead, the employees could not concentrate on their particular fields of competence, since they were encouraged to get involved and familiar with as many other roles as possible. This created an atmosphere of uncertainty and denied them the feeling of core competence in their chosen lines. It was no longer possible to excel in their own field when emphasis was strictly on the team as a whole.

The leader needs to see the big picture, armed with information gathered from the team members — their managers. But all the cogs in the wheel [read workers] have to be able to each do their own part without being expected to manage others as well.

Not everyone wants to be a manager. Not everyone knows how to be a manager. Not everyone is fit to be a manager. One of the most interesting viewpoints I found in this book is this:

The most importance difference between a great manager and a great leader is one of focus. Great managers look inward. They look inside the company, into each individual, into the differences in style, goals, needs, and motivation of each person. These differences are small, subtle, but great managers need to pay attention to them. These subtle differences guide them toward the right way to release each person’s unique talents into performances.

Leaders focus outward on possible paths and directions and organizational strategies. But it is to the great manager that an employee shows commitment and dedication.

There are many more insights to be found within these pages, and this is a book to be read more than once, and used as a desk reference.

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Part 1: Employee Engagement Research

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
is based on 2 Gallup Research Studies taken over the last 25 years. – the largest study of its kind ever undertaken. The first one zeroed in on Employee satisfaction and productivity, and asked “What Do the Most Talented Employees Need from their Workplace?” The answer was that talented employees needed great managers. Gallup recorded interviews with over 80,000 managers at different management levels, with different styles of managing, and a million employees, to find out the core attributes of great managers and employee performance.

Their findings regarding employee engagement are intriguing. One conclusion is that key employees do not fit a mold. You should not, and cannot, try to make them all behave the same. They bring their own core values and behaviors to the workplace, and each one contributes their own perspective and way of doing things. They may react differently to the same treatment. Thus, if you do not see them as individuals, with inclinations and behaviors formed by their unique selves, you may lose the best part of each of them.

If organizations view employee satisfaction as not being critical to the company’s success, consider these eye-opening facts stated by Gallup:

“Actively disengaged employees erode an organization’s bottom line while breaking the spirits of colleagues in the process. Within the U.S. workforce, Gallup estimates this cost to be more than $300 billion in lost productivity alone. In stark contrast, world-class organizations with an engagement ratio near 8:1 have built a sustainable model using our approach. As organizations move toward this benchmark, they greatly reduce the negative impact of actively disengaged employees while unleashing the organization’s potential for rapid growth.”

“Through rigorous research, we have identified 12 core elements – the Q12 — that link powerfully to key business outcomes. These 12 statements emerged as those that best predict employee and workgroup performance.”

In deference to the Gallup Organization, I won’t lay out those 12 elements here, but I provide a link from Gallup for you to uncover them yourself.

Employee Engagement Overview

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll discuss Gallup’s research into great management.

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