Prior to this week, I’ve had mixed success with posting on LinkedIn. Some posts get lots of views and reactions, others go quietly away with little notice. But this week, the astounding happened!
One of my posts has gone viral. I honestly had to look up what “viral” meant, because I have never experienced virality (viralness?) before—and my post has done it. People have asked me how and why, and I don’t really know (LinkedIn’s algorithms have always had me scratching my head). However, I surmise it’s the rather provocative quote I put at the top of the post:
"While people do want more money, it's often lousy management that makes them start looking. This is a problem that is harder but cheaper to solve. Put real effort into increasing your management skills, and you may find your turnover dropping instead of increasing."
More to the point, I think it’s these two provocative words that resonated with so many:
lousy management
At time of writing, I had almost 500,000 views and 1000 reactions. I’ve had a bundle of comments and shares coming in from people all over the world and the common perception seems to be that managers… well… suck. It would appear “lousy management” has gone viral.
This is not a surprise. I’ve had this notion for a few years now, which is why I wrote a book and started a training business to help. People are unhappy at work, and many are leaving their jobs to try their luck elsewhere. We’ve seen companies desperately try to find employees to fill their vacant roles, but what they’re not really putting focus on is how to stop people from quitting.
According to Gallup, the #1 reason people cite for quitting their jobs is their manager. Gallup goes on to state:
75% of people quit their job to “get away from their manager at some point in their career.
Right now, organizations can’t afford to lose good people because of bad managers. Organizations need to take a good look at what their managers are doing to improve, or destroy, engagement.
There’s a real opportunity for companies to change things for the better—better for employees, for customers, for productivity, and for the bottom line. It all begins with managers. But there’s another problem…
Managers don’t just naturally know how to lead people. Great managers are scarce.
Only about 1 in 10 people possess the high talent to manage. - Gallup
That means about 90% of managers are struggling right now to connect with their team members, never mind engage and inspire them.
Typically, individuals in a company take on a management role around age 30. But then guess how old they are when they get their first manager training. 42!
I’m going to let that sink in for a minute…
We put people into positions where they are leading others, but then we don’t offer them any training or support for 12 years! This gap is alarming!
It’s alarming because 12 years is a good amount of time for bad habits to take hold and for poor attitudes to be created. It’s also a long enough time to lose a great deal of money on poor employee retention.
So, what is the answer? Seems obvious to me. Invest in your managers.
Managers need training and support. If you want your company to see better engagement and retention in 2022, train your managers. If you want to see higher productivity and improved efficacy, train your managers. If you want to have happier customers and greater revenue in 2022 and beyond, train your managers.
Manager training is what I do. Check out my programs at www.cchangelearning.com/training-for-managers or speak to me about customized programs for your team.
And check out my book for a resource on how you can become a better manager.