It’s the Manager – Jim Clifton, Jim Harter

A must-read for leaders, CEOs and Founders.

Make wise choices

Beyond chance, which is credited with some good choices, there are three essential elements for achievement:

Leaders are aware of their strengths and limitations.

They employ critical thinking and recognise blind spots that pose a high risk.

They make use of data that is driven by analytics.

How to control and foster creativity

In businesses, innovation is crucial. Many businesses claim to value strong creativity in their workforce. Despite the fact that every job has the potential for creativity, the majority of employees don’t think they are expected to be original or come up with new ideas. The people doing the work are the ones closest to it.

Organizational Change Is Hard

When it comes to designing complex buildings, building infrastructure, and building systems with high levels of process efficiency, the old boss-to-employee, command-and-control leadership environment has “worked.” But in the modern workplace, where coaching and collaboration are essential for success, top-down leadership strategies have not been able to keep up.

Traits of great managers

About half of great management comes from hardwired tendencies, and the other half from experiences and ongoing development.

Great managers inspire teams to do exceptional work, set goals and align resources for the team to excel, persuade others to act by overcoming adversity and resistance, build committed teams with deep bonds, and take an analytical approach to strategy and decision-making.

Creating a culture of high development

Two-thirds of U.S. employees have been either not engaged or actively disengaged in their jobs and workplaces during this time. A high-development workplace requires much more than just administering surveys. Measurement on its own doesn’t inspire change, boost performance, or improve the workplace or business outcomes.

Organizational culture

Your purpose, or the reason you are in business, sets the tone for your culture. Daily survival is determined by your managers. Your brand, or how customers and employees perceive your business, is influenced by your culture. Your most talented employees are motivated to deliver superior customer experiences by a world-class culture. An organisation loses credibility with customers and employees in particular when it makes a brand promise but cannot keep it.

The gender gap

Globally speaking, businesses require a much higher percentage of female employees because it’s good for both business and women.

Women tend to be more engaged than men, and female managers typically have more engaged staff members than male managers. Unfair treatment, unequal pay, and work-life flexibility are the three main issues that women who hold paid employment face.

Hiring analysis

Five universal innate characteristics or tendencies can predict performance in various job types. They are initiation (taking action), motivation (drive for success), work style (effectively organising work), collaboration (creating partnerships), and thought process (solving problems through the assimilation of new information).

Four requirements for a good hire.

Prior accomplishments and experiences, innate traits, numerous interviews, and on-the-job observation.

Not just a job

Generation Z and the Millennial generation are looking for more than just a job. They are now pursuing development rather than job satisfaction. Instead of bosses, they prefer coaches. They prefer ongoing conversations over yearly reviews. They don’t want a manager who is constantly focusing on their flaws. They desire a life rather than just another job.

Benefits, perks and flextime

The modern workforce does not require amenities like game rooms, complimentary meals, or high-end espresso machines. They are seeking perks and benefits that will enhance their well-being, i.e., those that give them more freedom, flexibility, and the capacity to live better lives.

What makes a difference in an organization

The manager alone determines 70% of the variation in team engagement. You have fulfilled the new global will, which is a great job and a great life, when you have great managers who can unlock the potential of every team member.

How to develop your managers

Managers report higher levels of stress and burnout, poorer work-life balance, and poorer physical health than individual contributors on the teams they lead.

Gallup suggests development programs that are consistent with creating a strengths-based culture, shifting from being a boss to more of a coach, and requiring executives to have strengths-based conversations with each manager or team leader once a week.

How leaders should address diversity and inclusion

The answer lies in how your employees perceive the three requirements:

“Treat me with dignity,”

“Respect me for my abilities.”

“Leaders will follow the right path.”

The exit

Every business encounters both positive and negative turnover.

What constitutes a successful exit?

The worker feels understood.
The employee leaves satisfied with their contribution.
You create a brand ambassador.

Your organization’s ability to retain top talent and, ultimately, the quality of its employment brand will depend on the experiences and interactions people have while they are working there.

The five steps

Start with the CEO if you want it to succeed.
Encourage each employee to identify their strengths.
Create a group of internal strength coaches.
Strengths should be considered in performance management.
Change your learning programmes to make the most of the time that each person spends developing their skills.

The three requirements to make managers into coaches

By teaching your managers to fulfill these three criteria, you can turn them from managers into coaches:

Set clear guidelines.
Coach continuously.
Establish accountability.

Employees were nearly four times more likely to be engaged than other employees if their managers gave them a say in setting goals.

The new office

Employees of today demand autonomy and flexibility in every aspect of their work life, including where they work and how their workspace is set up. A little bit more than half of American workers claim they would switch jobs if they could have more flexibility in their schedules.

Employees desire their own offices, personal workspaces, and privacy when needed.

Women in the workplace: work-life flexibility

Men and women almost universally cite “balance between work and family” as one of the greatest difficulties faced by working women in their nations. There is a difference between a company saying it supports flexibility and actually doing so.

Women and men alike define what a good life and career mean to them as individuals.

The money and the position

Discussions about pay and promotions must be in line with professional development and actual career advancement.

Even though pay is a personal preference, the standards for pay raises and promotions ought to be open. When deciding on promotions or pay for small groups, avoid using forced rankings. Assume that each team has high, middle, and low performers.

Make “my development” the reason employees stay

“Career growth opportunities” are the top reason people change jobs today. Experts advise providing these fresh opportunities for advancement outside of management to ambitious and successful workers:

the accomplishment of an individual as a manager or high-performing contributor,
Personalized training for a career path and
Flexible career paths with various options for various stages of life

Diversity and inclusion

Race, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, lifestyle, personality characteristics, height, weight, other physical characteristics, family composition, educational background, tenure with the organization, political ideology, and worldview are examples of diversity categories.

Strengths-based conversations

The goal of traditional performance management is to rank, rate, and “correct” an employee’s weaknesses. This strategy frequently falls short of improving performance. So how do managers know how to give employees the right amount of praise and criticism? For exceptional career development, it is crucial to conduct a thorough assessment of a person’s strengths and weaknesses.