How To Win At Managing

As we re-imagine the world of work, the signs are pointing to a variety of hybrid solutions, where people come into an office or a gathering place at some points to connect and build bonds. At other times, team members will continue to work from home – or elsewhere (often called “remote”, though that word suggests a lack of connection, which is risky).

A Gallup survey which studied the variables that influence the well-being and productivity of dispersed workers noted that one key item was far and above most important in influencing worker productivity. It’s not tech support, nor is it a quiet space to work. Not surprisingly, it’s worker’s managers. Recent McKinsey research cited bad or uninspiring managers as the reason fully 34% of those surveyed left their jobs.

It’s clear that managers are key to a company’s success in hiring and retaining people, as well as in building employee engagement – eg. connection to the company – and keeping it strong. A Corporate Leadership Council report found that “companies with above average employee commitment had greater one-year revenue growth relative to their industry than those with below-average employee commitment”. Gallup research really brings this home with the statistic that companies with highly engaged workforces are 21% more profitable than comparators with disengaged employees.

And here’s the worst part, Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer at Goodwater Capital and author of the book When They Win, You Win, says in the first line of his book, “Managers are failing and no one is helping.”

Wait, how can that be? It seems like over the last 15 years that there’s been a massive amount of material published aimed at helping people become better leaders . Despite this, success seems limited. As evidence, only 32% of US employees are engaged, according to a January 2023 article from Gallup.

“The first issue is that all of the mountains of content out there has conspired to confuse the average manager. As thought leaders evangelise their latest grandiose theory about leadership, and wax prosaically at cocktail parties about how ‘leadership is better than management,’ we’ve collectively lost the thread”, Laraway states.

Laraway has lots of relevant experience under his belt, including roles as Chief People Officer at Qualtrics, COO and Co-founder at Radical Candor, Vice President of SMB at Twitter, and winner of a “Great Manager” award at Google. “First, we have to simplify the job of every manager,” he says. “The simplest version of a job description that fits every single manager in the world, from a big tech CEO to the front-line sandwich shop manager at your local deli is this:

1. deliver an aligned result
2. enable the success of the people on your teams.

Simple. But not easy.

“The content aimed at helping people lead better suffers from three main problems. First, it’s just too much stuff. Second, it does not hang together, and third and most important, none of it holds itself to measurable account. Or said differently, there’s no proof that the leadership-prescription-of-the-month works.”

Laraway says that for a leadership prescription to be credibly said to work, that prescription must measurably and predictably lead to 1) more engaged employees and 2) better business results. “You can’t sustainably get the latter without the former.”

Laraway defends this idea strongly in his book, bringing in a bunch of compelling third party research and featuring his own first party research as well. He uncovered a dozen or so leadership behaviours that, when practiced regularly, actually do measurably lead to more engaged employees and better business outcomes. Those dozen or so behaviours are organised into what Laraway calls The Big 3 – Direction, Coaching, Career.

What are the Big 3?

• Direction – Everyone on the team they lead must clearly understand what is expected of them.
• Coaching – Coach them toward success in their current role
• Career – Take an active interest in their longer term aspirations and play the role of gravity-assist slingshot, launching them into the far reaches of their wildest dreams. Indeed, Laraway, notes, in employee pulse surveys the question that most strongly correlates with “intent to leave” (hence attrition) is “How much do you agree with the following statement: My manager cares about me as a human being.” The more strongly employees agree with this, the more likely they are to stay.

Laraway says that, when practiced together, these 3 broad groupings of leadership behaviours deliver more engaged employees and better business results.

He notes his leadership prescription is simple, coherent, and works.

“People just want to do great work and be totally psyched while doing it, and it turns out that it’s the manager – more than any other factor by a mile – who is most likely to create or destroy the circumstances under which that will happen. A company’s performance is nothing more and nothing less than the sum of the performance of all of its employees.”

For a vast majority of employees, their manager is the main (sometimes only) conduit between them and the company. Hence, it’s logical that the manager is the person most likely to create or destroy the circumstances under which people will thrive and deliver aligned results. Make sure the managers in your company are not confused by all the material out there but instead have simple, core principles to follow – and are getting the needed direction, coaching, and career focus they need, as well.