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Traits and Qualities of a Good Manager

The need to monitor and train managers for an organizational success.

Managers can make or break the effective functionality of an organization and their action alone are responsible for employee engagement rates in the workplace. But according to the recent findings of Gallup, the American research-based global performance management consulting company, organizations fail to choose the right talent for the job 82% of the times.

Bad managers cost organizations billions of dollars each year due to bad management practices and low employee engagements. In fact, in a large scale worldwide study conducted in the year 2012, Gallup found that only 30% workers are completely engaged at work while the rates were as low as 13% worldwide.

Despite numerous attempts by organizations to improve this numbers, including minute monitoring of tasks, productivity, and effectivity of their work, these numbers have barely budged since then, meaning that a majority of employees globally are not developing and contributing to their fullest at the workplace.

While studying the performance and engagement of over 27 million people employed across 2.5 million work units over the past two decades, Gallup discovered that irrespective of the industry, organizations size and geography, performance of each work team or unit tends to vary vastly, within an organization.

Performance metrics fluctuated vastly within a single organization suggesting a direct and vastly un-proportionate link between employee engagement at team levels and vital performance indicators like customer satisfaction, productivity, turnover, absenteeism, and shrinkage.

While the simple solution to this dilemma would be raising employee engagement levels consistently at every work unit across organizations, this is a task easy said and done. To make this happen companies should systematically provide each work team with a great manager, who can motivate, lead, guide and engage their team members to the fullest.

And to do that, the organizations has to find these great managers.

The general consensus among performance experts on the qualities of great managers includes the ability to engage and motivate each and every team members, create a culture of accountability, build a relationship of trust, dialogue and transparency and make decisions that are based on productivity and not politics.

Sadly according to the same Gallup research, only one in ten people possess all these necessary traits. While many people are gifted with some of them only a few have a unique combination of qualities to help a team achieve excellence at a rate that can affect and improve a company’s performance. This 10 % when put in managerial roles naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers and sustain a culture of high productivity, on an average generating 48% higher profits to the organizations they work for when compared with an average manager.

Moreover, great managers also lead by example, following seemingly simple yet inspirational acts they encourage and engage their team members into better development and performance.

As an example, great managers lead by example when it comes to working hours. Again a Gallup poll which utilized data from a number of people, time and task management platforms like OPPTIMO, proved that managers who work long hours also led teams where members worked 19% more time than their peers. Moreover, despite the fact that they were working longer hours, their engagement levels were maintained at an average of 5% more than their lower utilization peers.

Moreover, good managers were also great allocators of work. Another telltale sign of a great manager was the way a load of work was distributed among his or her team members. While naturally responsibilities might have varied among team members, each member on an average worked as a team and equally towards achieving a common goal.

In addition, effective managers also maintained large internal networks across organizations, which in turn created a smooth passage for their team members when coordinating tasks that require inter-unit effort at a workplace.

Great managers also took time for one on one meetings with each team members to provide constructive feedbacks and advice on developing their current skills and addressing issues relating to their work. Gallup found out that the best managers took at least 30 minutes every three weeks to provide performance assessments in addition to providing on the job training and guidance when required.

Finally, great managers engaged at work too. The possibility of a disengaged employee reporting and engaging with a disengaged manager was found out to be two folds less than the average engagement level proving the Gallup findings that a manager has a disproportionate impact on employee engagement level.

But there is no need for organizations to lose heart and abandon all hopes of finding great managers. Given that large companies have 10 team members for one manager and Gallup finding that one in ten employees have great potential to be a great manager, the likelihood is that every team contains at least one candidate to be a great manager, chances are that it’s not the manager.

Want to find the employee with high managerial potential? Look no further than your people, task and performance management platform and its metrics.