The Staggering Cost of Bad Managers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When bad managers are allowed to run free, everyone suffers.

Employees suffer — Employees feel unsupported, undirected, bullied, confused, unmotivated, unappreciated, frustrated, and constantly questioning, “is it me?” So they are not engaged and they are not productive. 

Executives suffer — When executives lack confidence in the team beneath them, they have to cover for, or recover from poor work and decisions from ineffective managers. They become overloaded because they have to do their job AND the job of their managers. 

Business suffers —  When managers are not stepping up to do their jobs — making clear, good decisions and building a strong, capable team beneath them — then executives can’t fully do their jobs because they keep getting dragged down. Business progress slows or stops.

The Costs

Humu, the workplace software company led by former Google HR chief Laszlo Bock, points out that bad managers cost US companies at least $960 billion per year. This is according to Gallup data from 2019—and it likely underestimates the true cost, Bock adds. (More recent data from Gallup’s 2021 State of the Global Workplace report (pdf) show that a lack of engagement—a result of bad management—costs the global economy $8.1 trillion in lost productivity each year.)

Even if some of the costs listed here can’t be tracked by the finance department directly, they still have real impact. And it doesn’t take much imagination to see how each can lead to real dollar costs.

• Turnover. The number one reason people voluntarily leave a job is that they fire their boss.  Even when they cite other reasons (like pay), they would be less likely to be looking if they had a great relationship with their immediate leader.
• Reduced engagement. Seen by many organizations as the solution to organizational problems, employee engagement won’t be solved solely by EAP programs, job and work flexibility, great facilities or even top quartile pay. Most people will be immediately more engaged in and committed to their work with they have a skilled and effective manager.
• Reduced productivity. Productivity typically tracks engagement, but additionally when people have a bad boss, people may be less focused on the work, take more sick days, and generally be laxer about their job responsibilities.
• Increased health care costs.  Beyond more “sick days” (whether actually sick or not), one real cost of bad managers is an increase in stress-related health care costs.
• Poor decisions.  Even if the manager is brilliant, if they make decisions with little or no input from team members, they will have less perspective and may make poorer decisions – or at least make decisions that have less commitment from the team to implement.
• No decisions. Some of the bad bosses you’ve encountered may make no decisions or take no action on issues brought to them.  This is equally ineffective, may lead to missed opportunities and broken trust.

This is just a short list.  Your experience with a bad boss might give you other examples and issues. Ultimately, they will likely roll up to the big three – increased turnover, reduced engagement, and reduced productivity.

The Business Value of Good managers

The research in this HBR blog post by Randall Beck and James Harter, Why Good Managers so Rare, shows that the quality of the managers impacts the success of the business more than anything else.

Here are some highlights:

• Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager.

• Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company.

• Businesses that get it right, however, and hire managers based on talent, will thrive and gain a significant competitive advantage.

• To make this happen, companies should systematically demand that every team within their workforce have a great manager.

• If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup finds that great managers have the following talents:

• They motivate every single employee to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.
• They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
• They create a culture of clear accountability.
• They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
• They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.
  

Imagination and permission

I find that the key manager skills above listed in the HBR article — motivating, driving outcomes, clear accountability, building trust, and good decisions — are indeed rare but can be improved.

Many managers end up in management positions for reasons other than these. The mistake I see many companies make is to expect people to automatically turn into good managers simply because they are in the job.

They miss the key step of telling their managers what makes a good manager, or setting clear expectations about what the job is.

Managers tend not to step up on their own because of issues with either imagination (they don’t know they are supposed to), or permission (they are not sure they are allowed to).

• Imagination: You need to get it into the mind of your managers that they need to be good at and do these new manager-things. Some poorly performing managers will do better, simply be being made aware of the game.

• Permission: Some people don’t think they have the permission to step forward and lead in this way — especially if no one has ever talked to them about it. You need to make it clear that not only is it OK, it’s required. And if they don’t have the skills or a plan to lead in this way, you need to train and coach them or let them go.
  

Make your company stronger

My favorite line in Why Good Managers so Rare is this one:

 "Companies should systematically demand that every team within their workforce have a great manager.”

Amen!

A Cost Reduction Plan

If you want to reduce the cost of bad managers, you need better managers. 

There are three major ways to improve the overall skill and effectiveness of leaders in your organization: 

• Fire and replace 
• Have better selection and hiring processes 
• Develop the managers already in place

The most egregious examples might warrant immediate replacement or reassignment.  If you simply replace one bad boss with another, you didn’t really improve anything (but you did further lower the morale and hope of the team).  Certainly, you can work on your hiring and selection practices (for both internal and external candidates, but that doesn’t give much immediate help.

The single best way to reduce the cost of bad managers is to help them develop into good managers. That happens with feedback, coaching and training. Many organizations have reduced their focus and investment in leadership development during the turbulence of the past couple of years. That turbulence has made the job of a leader/manager even more complex. The mix of a harder role with less support is a recipe for more bad bosses.

It is time to look carefully at the skills and results of our managers and provide them with the support they need to grow and improve.  Doing this will create positive ripples beyond what you might image and cut operating costs at the same time.

 To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, third-party maintenance providers, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Google's Discovery About the Secret to Success at Work

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote this title because people will likely read it – we love secrets to success, and if they are surprising, all the better. Depending on your beliefs and experience, this post may be neither. Either way, what am about to share will make a difference for you professionally and for the organization you serve.

This Washington Post article got me thinking about this topic. The article is about what Google has learned about the most important skills they need. The surprise, at least to Google, was that technical skills weren’t at the top of the list. 

To quote from the article:

"In 2022, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis by crunching every bit and byte of hiring, firing, and promotion data accumulated since the company’s incorporation in 1998. Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas."

This is significant; one of the organizations that most relies on and had until that point focused hiring on the very best technical ability says that those abilities are the 8th most important to their organizations success.

To put it in another way, technical skills are the admission to the game, but winning takes far more than that.

Look at the rest of that list…

• Coaching skills
• Communicating and listening well.
• Possessing insights into others.
• Empathy.
• Critical thinking and problem solving.
• Making connections across complex ideas.

The first four of those are 100% interpersonal and people skills; what the article calls the soft skills. And since businesses (even Google, the technical giant) are made up of people, it makes sense.

The Forest and the Trees
You’ve heard the metaphor of not being able to see the forest for the trees – this situation is informed perfectly by this metaphor. Our organizations want the technical skills, whatever they are: finance, engineering, marketing, operations – name the technical expertise that is important to your organization.  These are the trees.  We must have trees in order to have a forest, but the forest is more than individual trees, it is a living system with all of the trees working together symbiotically for mutual success.

Hiring only for technical competence focuses you on the trees; but your organization is a forest.

It is easier to hire for technical skill – many of these skills are testable, tangible and resumes are filled with testaments to these skills. Easier – but not more effective.

 It is harder to seek, suss out and select for the softer skills, like but not inclusive of those on the list above.  But if you want a successful resilient organization you must do the hard work of hiring for soft skills.

The Message For You Personally
I’ve taken an organization focus so far, but let me make the point personally now.  Organizational success is about people skills, so your personal success must rest on that foundation.  You need to be focused on building your technical or job skills – and while those are important (you need to stay abreast of changes in your field of expertise), they aren't enough – again they simply buy you entrance to the game.

If you want to play the game at a higher level you must build you interpersonal skills with the level of dedication and focus they deserve.

The Secret?
By now you know the secret.  The secret to success is being able to communicate with, interact with, collaborate with, and influence people.  Time spent investing in learning, improving and practicing those skills are the best investment you can make in your future success at work and in life.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Elevate Culture and Performance by Having Better Conversations (The 4 Core Conversation Skills)

 

 

 

 

The quality of your workplace culture, and ultimately business results, depends on the quality of the conversations. The stories about the past, present, and future shape the identity of your organization. From casual conversations to passionate meeting debates, how people engage with each other (or not) is a true indicator of your company culture.

Poor conversations are frustrating, keeping your team stuck in the past.

Better culture and performance starts with better conversations. Teams create better solutions via dialogue. Transform your company culture and improve business results with effective conversations.

Everything your team members do is facilitated through conversations. They envision the future through dialogue. They uncover new possibilities to move the organization forward. Conversations bring culture to life – both what's working and what's not.

Crucial conversations lie all around us – all the time.

Curiosity starts conversations. Conversations spark action. Action drives change.

From coaching to performance reviews to making decisions, conversations are the foundation of effective team collaboration.

Your organization's culture is created and reflected in the conversations people have – and the ones they avoid.  

How to Have More Effective Conversations

Defining moments in the workplace are the result of crucial conversations – they shift our mindsets and behaviors.

Facilitating candid conversations is not easy. It requires courage. You must be able to work with people rather than through people. Take the first step. Listen more than you plan. Reflect, learn, and explore possibilities.

The purpose of conversation is to grow as a team, not to win an argument.

Better conversations are built on the four most important core skills, according to research by The Center for Creative Leadership:

1. Listening to understand: There are multiple levels of information we must tune in to during conversations. Move beyond the facts. Listen to the values at play and understand the other person's perspective.

2. Asking powerful questions: Great questions spark curiosity, opening new paths for more interesting conversations. Open-ended questions drive clarity, promote critical thinking, inspire reflection, and challenge assumptions. Often beginning with 'Why,' 'How,' or 'What do you think about…,' they set the stage to uncover new perspectives.

3. Challenging and supportive: Successful teams embrace cognitive diversity by challenging underlying assumptions. Psychological safety is vital to encourage candid conversations – to challenge the idea, not the person. Providing support is about ensuring that people have been heard. Find the right balance between challenge and support.  

4. Establishing next steps and accountability: Great conversationalists go with the flow – they focus on the journey, not the destination. However, regardless of their relentless curiosity, they always wrap up with concrete next steps. Your team should walk away from a conversation with a shared understanding, clear agreements, and next steps.

Check out a related post: How to Get Clarity, Accountability, and Results In Five Minutes.

Fortunately, the four conversational skills can be developed. You can use them one at a time or together.

Building a strong company culture starts with candid conversations. Which conversations are you avoiding? Which ones harm or nurture your culture?

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Emotional Intelligence and the Fine Art of Failure

 

 

 

 

 

In business literature there’s a lot of emphasis on success, but less on failure. So, I decided to share some thoughts about the fine art of failure with a simple emotional intelligence practice that Dr. Brene Brown calls “holding the rawness of vulnerability in our hearts.” 

Learning how to fail will help you more than almost anything else in life—in the next six months, the next year, the next ten years, for as long as you live.

Failure presents a golden opportunity to practice the emotional intelligence techniques that are taught in the Leadership Academy. I emphasize the word practice because leadership is not a role; it’s a practice. You should know that this is a fierce practice and not [excuse the pun], for the feint of heart. 😀

When we fail—in other words, when things don’t work out the way you want them to—we feel our vulnerability in a raw and powerful way. Our uncomfortable *ego tries to escape from the rawness. 

[*Ego. There are various ways to talk about this word. The definition I like is “that which resists what is.” Ego struggles against reality, against open-endedness and the natural movement of life. It is very uncomfortable with vulnerability and ambiguity, with not being sure how to pin things down.]

 One of the most common methods is to blame our failure on something outside of us. Our relationships don’t work out, so we blame the other person. We don’t get a job, so we blame our potential employers, or society or the state of the economy.

The other common approach is to feel bad ourselves and label ourselves a failure. Either way, we feel there’s something fundamentally wrong with us.

There’s a third way, which is to train ourselves to simply feel what we feel. This is a simple but challenging practice is learning to hold the rawness of vulnerability in our hearts. 

When we’re resisting or trying to escape from “what is” there is usually some kind of physical sign—a tightening or contraction somewhere in the body. When you notice this sign of resistance, see if you can stick with the raw feeling just for a moment, just long enough for your nervous system to start getting used to it.

Master teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, wrote, “we don’t have the patience to stay with uncomfortable feelings for even three minutes.” When I read that, I thought, “Three minutes! That would be enough to win you some kind of grand prize!” 

For most of us these days, staying with discomfort for even three seconds without checking our device or eating something to distract ourselves from the edgy feelings takes a lot of effort! But whatever the amount of time, the idea is to keep increasing it gradually, at your own pace. Keep allowing yourself to hang in there for just a bit longer.

The ego wants resolution, wants something secure and certain to hold on to. The ego freezes the emotions that are actually fluid, it grasps at what is in motion, it tries to escape the alive nature of everything. As a result, we feel dissatisfied, haunted and threatened. We spend much of our time in a cage created by our own fear of discomfort.

The alternative is to train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart. Through this practice, we can eventually accustom our nervous systems to relaxing with the uncontrollable nature of things.

If we close down to our unpleasant feeling without self-awareness (The first skill of Emotional Intelligence) or curiosity, if we always mask ourselves or try to make our vulnerability go away, out of that space comes addictions of all kinds as well as unproductive leadership behaviors.

On the other hand, if we go beyond blame and other escapes and just hold the space for our vulnerability, we can enter a place where the best part of ourselves comes out. Our bravery, our kindness, our ability to care about and reach out to others—all of our best human qualities –come out of that space.

"Vulnerability is like a connector... it connects you to the rest of the world."                                             ~Phil Stutz 

In addition to the emotional intelligence practice of embracing your vulnerability, here are three more techniques to add to your art of failure toolkit.

1.  Change your vocabulary. Failure isn’t if you do better the next time. In Leaders on Leadership, Warren Bennis interviewed seventy of the nation’s top performers in numerous fields. 

None of them used the word failure to describe their mistakes. Instead, they referred to learning experiences, tuition paid, detours, or opportunities for growth. You may think that’s a small difference, but that small difference can make a big difference. The way you think determines how you act.

2. Learn from your mistakes. Successful restaurateur and celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck said, “I learned more from the one restaurant that didn’t work than from all the ones that were successes.” Isn’t that usually that way it is? We can often learn more from our failures that our successes—when we have the right attitude about the failures. 

When we don’t try to make excuses or blame others we always learn something. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad says, “Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” That’s the mark of a great attitude! You don’t lose—you learn.

3. Make failure a gauge for growth. Successful people understand the role failure plays in achievement. That’s true in any endeavor in life. Thomas Edison said, “I’m not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” And gold medal- winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton asserted, “Achieving that goal is a good feeling, but to get there you have to also pick yourself up and continue.” 

Whether it’s thousands of experiments that don’t work or thousands of falls from a balance beam, the milestones on the road of success are always failure. The farther you go, the more failures you experience.

We all have tremendous potential and yet we stay closed in a very small, fearful world, based on wanting to avoid the unpleasant things like failure. There is a vast, limitless richness we could experience if we trained our minds to the open-ended, uncertain reality of how things really are.

Check out three related posts:

15 Quotes About Bouncing Back from Failure

The Best Leaders Dare to Be Vulnerable

How to Stretch Outside of Your Comfort Zone (Where the magic happens)

To your greater success and well-being,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees or a SMART Development consultant please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, energy storage and facilities management, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

 

Do you have Workaholic tendencies? (Learn how to find balance)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Workaholism isn’t about the number of hours you work—it’s about your ability to disconnect from your job. To help determine whether you might be a workaholic, read the following statements and rate the degree to which each one describes you, using the following scale: 1 = never true; 2 = seldom true; 3 = sometimes true; 4 = often true; 5 = always true.
 
1. I work because there is a part inside of me that feels compelled to work.
 
2. It is difficult for me to stop thinking about work when I stop working.
 
3. I feel upset if I have to miss a day of work for any reason.
 
4. I tend to work beyond my job’s requirements.
 
Add up your total score. If you rated any of these items a 4 or a 5, you have some workaholic tendencies. But if your total score is 15 or above, you’re displaying significant signs of workaholism.  (Source: Qualtrics research)

6 Tips for Overcoming Workaholism and Finding Balance

1. Redefine “urgent.” Workaholics often see every task as high priority, creating unnecessary stress. Step back, review past tasks, and see how many were truly urgent.
 
2. Reinvent your to-do list. Shift your focus from completing everything to prioritizing what's important. A tool like the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the “urgent-versus-important matrix”) can help you decide how to spend your time.
 
3. Learn to say “no” and delegate. Practice declining tasks that don’t align with your priorities. You don’t have to do it all.
 
4. Fix your workaholic clock. Track how long tasks actually take, then adjust your expectations. Give yourself more time or ask for help.
 
5. Control rumination. Break the cycle of overthinking work by practicing mindfulness or using mantras to shift focus. You may also try scheduling a specific time to mentally revisit work concerns, limiting how much headspace they occupy during your off-hours.

Click here for more tips on how to manage your self-talk.
 
6. Embrace rest. Incorporate intentional breaks, physical activity, and hobbies into your day. Recovery fuels better performance.Being a workaholic doesn’t necessarily mean you are a high achiever; it might indicate that you are seeking something else, such as attention, or using work as a way to escape. Remember that working harder won't solve the underlying issue. Long-term success requires balance, which means making time for personal growth, relationships, and hobbies outside of work. By addressing workaholism, you not only improve your well-being but also become more productive in the long term and set a positive example for those around you.

Being a workaholic doesn’t necessarily mean you are a high achiever; it might indicate that you are seeking something else, such as attention, or using work as a way to escape. Remember that working harder won't solve the underlying issue. Long-term success requires balance, which means making time for personal growth, relationships, and hobbies outside of work. By addressing workaholism, you not only improve your well-being but also become more productive in the long term and set a positive example for those around you.

Check out a related post: 7 Ways to Achieve A Work/Life Balance  (3 min read)

To your greater success and well-being,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees or a SMART Development consultant please 

contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, energy storage and facilities management, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.