What do you think is one of the main reasons why people leave a company? Redundancy? Mistakes leading to dismissal?
Finding a promotion elsewhere? No. The number one reason for employees leaving a business is due to poor management.
A recent study conducted in the USA showed that 75% of employees left their job on their own steam because of their manager, and not because of any other factor. Nothing to do with job satisfaction, nothing to do with colleague falls outs, and nothing to with the actual position itself; it was all down to poor management.
Now, if you have a manager who simply sits around in their leather boardroom chair, barking orders and not taking any initiative or showing any responsibility for the state of morale within the office, you can’t expect employees to want to work very hard for that person. Most of them will do the bare minimum, and the majority will be looking for another job in the meantime.
Check out this infographic for a few examples of the types of managers you don’t want in your office space.
Source: www.visualistan.com/2014/05/the-4-types-of-bad-managers-infographic.html
Hopefully your manager will be entirely different to the four listed in that infographic, and as you sit at your office desks and complete your tasks for the day, you can be sure that they are there, with their door open, should you need any assistance and guidance.
That is the sign of a good manager, one who inspires and communicates well with their staff. A manager who places far too much focus on general business growth, at the detriment to those actually doing the work, is not going to go far.
At the end of the day, managers are there to support and guide employees as people, human beings, and that is something that many managers simply overlook.
Let’s check out each of those bad managerial types in a little more detail.
Firstly we have the ‘Seagull’. This is the type of manager who inspires low morale, a manager who never checks in with employees and basically doesn’t care how people are feeling. He or she simply flies in and then flies out again. We then have the 'Mushroom'.
The Mushroom basically works in the dark, and that is how they like it. They throw work at their employees and don’t bother to see how anyone is coping. The Mushroom doesn’t have their door open, their office chair isn’t facing the door, waiting or someone to come in with a problem to be solved. They have their back to everyone.
The next two are very common, unfortunately. The 'Micromanager' inspects everything to such a tiny degree that they instil nothing but panic and anxiety in their employees. They undermine the confidence of their employees and don’t allow them to spread their wings and attempt to reach their potential. This is the opposite of a good manager.
Finally, we have the 'Saviour'. This is the type of manager who swoops in and takes credit for everything at the last minute, without having had any input whatsoever, and without guiding their employees in the slightest. As you can imagine, the Saviour isn’t particularly popular.
You can probably think of a few other types of bad managers, sat at their CEO office desk, barking orders and dragging everyone down, but they all have one thing in common - they are not doing their job properly, in fact they’re not doing their job at all. When these scenarios happen, staff leave their jobs because they simply don’t feel valued or cared about at all. They have no support, nobody to seek advice from, and they feel that one slight mistake and they’re going to be screamed at from here to eternity. When you consider the amount of time we spend at work, it’s not a good way to use your time!
Of course, a good manager understands their employees. They are supportive, inspiring, they are able to communicate well, they are positive, they are open to listening, and they inspire their employees to greatness. A good manager encourages team work and collaboration, and always has their door open, should anyone need to discuss anything. These are the types of managers who succeed, the types who place the support and comfort of their employees first.
This type of manager will source out the best office furniture to make his or her employees comfortable, they will seek out opinions and really listen, and they will create a ‘family’ feel within the office.
When this situation is in place, staff stay where they are, they progress and work up through the company; in the opposite situation, the opposite is true – employees leave and never look back.