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In my experience, if you ask senior leaders if they would fire a sales manager whose team missed quota three years in a row, they usually say yes. If you ask them if they would fire a plant manager whose facility had a poor safety record for three consecutive years, they would say yes. But ask if they would fire a manager whose workgroup had low engagement scores three years in a row, and they’re not so sure.
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Firing a manager for low employee engagement scores is a gray area for most leaders because they may see a number of mitigating factors. For example, a manager’s engagement scores may be lagging, but his team’s productivity and profitability numbers seem to be holding steady. Or a manager may have carried out layoffs that the company’s executive committee demanded, which could explain her team’s lower engagement levels. In some companies, the human resources department may be uncomfortable using engagement scores in a termination decision.
Whatever the case, most companies lack a framework to determine if and when managers who create disengaging workplaces need to go. Without that process in place, companies can leave poor managers in their jobs for too long. The following framework—based on clear performance expectations—can help you identify potentially harmful managers so you can reposition them in the company or remove them.
Step 1: Focus on managers with the lowest employee engagement scores. Determine which managers have engagement scores in the bottom 25 percent of all scores in the company as measured by the Gallup employee engagement metric. Any managers in that group may be chasing away their best employees or supervising a team that’s alienating its best customers. Those managers warrant further investigation.
Step 2: Determine how long those managers’ scores have been in the bottom quartile. Managers with a one-time drop in engagement may not need to be removed or repositioned, but they do demand special attention. Leaders should support these managers but require them to figure out what is causing the drop in engagement and submit an action plan to rectify the situation.
Leaders should also evaluate whether managers are faced with circumstances that are outside their control, such as volatile market conditions or the negative effects of necessary budget cuts. In this case, it’s crucial for leaders to provide support and guidance to help these managers cope with these problems.
Managers whose engagement scores have been in the bottom quartile for two or three consecutive years, however, require closer review from leadership. These managers are not dealing with a short-term disengagement problem; they appear to be creating a disengaging work environment that may be driving away talented employees and depressing workgroup performance.
Step 3: If managers’ scores have been in the bottom quartile for two or three years, consider repositioning them as individual contributors. Disengaged workgroups that outperform company averages on other key metrics are rare outliers; persistent disengagement generally leads to higher turnover and to lower productivity, lower customer engagement, and reduced profit. Still, every company will have these outliers, such as a sales manager who is difficult to work for but who puts up great numbers on his own year after year, or a manager with such rare technical expertise that replacing her would be difficult.
Managers with specialized knowledge and skills present leaders with a hard choice. Leaders must either give them training and support to help them improve as managers, or move them out of management and into roles as individual contributors.
Gallup research shows that people without the talent to manage will improve only slightly when given remedial management training. Propping up a failing manager won’t help his workgroup thrive—it just prolongs the situation that is disengaging the team. And it won’t do the manager much good, either; he is likely disengaged himself because he is being asked to do a job that doesn’t match his talents. So if a manager has valuable knowledge or specialized skills, it’s probably best to reassign him or create a role that allows him to excel and contribute to the organization.
Article by Kevin McConville. First published in the Gallup Business Journal.
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Comments
Talented Managers? A gammon.
Is there anybody to - honestly - raise his, or her, hand to the above question in any Board meeting? I think that Mr. Pareto can be right here, too: some 10% managers are talented, that's all. Most managers - as the greek rock band Aphrodite's Child sung - "teach us the hows instead of the whys". Most managers only look at bottom-line figures: it's just like what we could - and should - learn from History. The mercenaries' commanders were paid based on short-term battles' outcome, not on long-term war's overall performance. There's a basic difference between managers and leaders, that we keep confusing: leaders lead people, managers manage accounts. Thank you.
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