There are Effective Managers

During the last post, I asserted that managers sometimes negatively affect employee performance by their management style.  Research done by the Gallup Organization supported that conclusion and various people commented about negative practices that they’ve seen in their organization.

The good news is there are good managers who actively seek out ways to support their employees.  Now let’s pay homage to them and list the empowering practices that get their employees excited about working for them and performing at a high level.  Use the comment section below to tell us about your great manager.

Comments

[Andrea]

OK, I'll start the ball rolling. :) I had a *terrific* manager during the dot-com days. It was a startup, and he was the CEO of the company; but he had an amazing policy of transparency. He'd hold weekly meetings where, rather than us reporting to him on what WE were doing, he'd report to US on the status of venture funding, partnership agreements, hiring; he'd start round-table discussions about what kind of culture we were trying to foster, and the ethics of the business moves we could make (which resulted in, for example, a strict no-spamming policy.)

Sadly, the business didn't make it -- but I think that avoiding the trap of management secrecy helped us all to feel a lot more in control of our situations, and subsequently helped the whole company run more smoothly. You avoid a lot of the stress of office politics and gossip if you make sure that everyone knows what's really happening, straight from the horse's mouth. A worried, speculating employee isn't passionate, isn't creative, and isn't getting his work done.

[Bert]

Man, I'm disappointed. Either I'm wrong and there are no good managers out there or their workers are more apt to condemn their bosses than give them credit when it is due. Hmmm.

[Funky McWinkerbean]

Bert, I've had four jobs in the last ten years. In the shortest job, I was there for ten months and had three managers during that period. ONE of those was an absolute paragon of fairness, ethics, creativity, responsibility and mastery in his field, and I was grateful to have him. Every other manager I've ever had has been heavily weighted on the Dilbert side of life.

Somehow I don't think that I am unique.

[MB]

Bert -

Perhaps the saying, "Good employees succeed in spite of their managers, not because of them" has some bearing on the lack of responses. That being said, in my 24 years of professional life I've had over 20 managers, and most were good at providing the basic environment for fulfilling my job requirements. Few, however, acted in a manner that truly inspired me to greater success.

One noteworthy manager I had came out of retirement (former GE executive) and provided me the most outstanding leadership environment I've ever experienced - one that helped me to lead as well as providing me guidance to succeed. In retrospect, the behaviors he displayed that were most influential were (1) true engagement with me, 1-to-1, with frequent discussion on how my work directly impacted my subordinates AND our divisional objectives, (2) complete candor about the plans, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities (or lack thereof) of my company (and resulting personal opportunity), and (3) no separation of his life into 'roles', that is, having a single persona - his only role seemed to be himself. All too often my other managers played the role of boss to separate their work behavior (treatment of me) from the standards they held in their non-work persona, unfortunately enabling unfair or dishonest behavior in the workplace. My ideal manager was precisely the same person, regardless of the environment (work, recreation, social, etc.). I found this enabled me to almost completely eliminate my concern or office politics because of my confidence in his objectivity, inherent fairness, etc.

In short, he inspired my loyalty, and I enthusiastically followed him into the daily business battle because I KNEW we would share success.

- mb

[Jeni Grant]

I once worked at a Wal-Mart photo lab under a really stellar woman. It was the oddest place to find a great manager, but there she was. She cared about her department and her employees, and made sure that we were well taken care of and had what we needed to do our jobs. She did her best to hire the best people possible (no mean feat at a Wal-Mart), and challenged us every day. She knew what she was doing, and was eager to share her knowledge with her employees. Best of all, she was open and honest, and would talk candidly with us whenever we had concerns or questions.

Her leadership really showed in the quality of the work we did. Our pictures were consistently clear and had good color tone, the machines almost always ran smoothly, and we had professional photographers who trusted us to develop proofs and reprints. For any mini-lab, that's a mark of quality; for a Wal-Mart lab, that's almost unthinkable. To this day, I still take all my film there.

I left because working for Wal-Mart really is as bad as "they" say it is - despite the phenominal manager, I wasn't making enough money to live and I didn't have benefits. I've told her repeatedly, though, that if she ever leaves Wal-Mart to open her own shop, I will be the first to join her.

[Bert]

Jenni--

I'm glad you shared that with her! Sometimes, management doesn't get to hear the good things that they've done that have helped their people. Just like praise helps the employee...it does the same for the manager.

[anon]

I've worked with close to 30 managers in my career and, apart from 2, they were uninspiring at best, and downright loathsome at worst. The worst pattern by far in my experience are the owner/managers of small business, followed closely by people who become managers because they were 'there at the time' or the only person willing to take the job, with no management training provided.

The two rare management gems I've encountered possess many of the same qualities. They were:

- Always pleasant

- Got things done quickly when staff asked

- Took staff seriously

- Gave praise and lots of it where it was due

- Took a 'no blame' approach to mistakes so staff weren't afraid to learn from them

- Encouraged an environment of transparency

- Never just assigned blame, always dealt with problems constructively and offered constructive critisicm

- Left staff alone to do their work. I find it's a rare manager who can do this, even when it ultimately produces better results in staff because they feel the weight of responsibility they have been given, and so work hard to earn it. On this note, managers who hover around the work area I find incredibly annoying ;) The combination of implied authority (because they lack any real authority), and a lack of work to do, doesn't reflect well on them or instill much faith in them imo.

- Open, honest and trusworthy

I found that with these two managers I would always do my best work because I knew it would be rewarded and (the double-edged sword) I felt horribly guilty if I didn't do my best because I they deserved better than that from me.

There's something I think the vast majority of managers and business owners seem to forget, and that's their staff's ability to choose how much they will work, regardless of requirements. If for example someone is working in a crappy job with bad management, they will do the bare minimum required of them because it's the only form of 'revenge' (for want of a better word) available to them. On the other hand, if someone feels valued, they'll give 100% or more, they won't hold back because they won't feel any compulsion too.

Just my $0.02 anyway, hope it's helpful :) Good managers are out there, but they are rare creatures indeed, and whenever I encounter one I make sure I tell them what a good job I think they're doing. The last thing we need are these rare people getting jaded and leaving us to the pack of wolves that makes up the majority of the management class.