In our last newsletter, “Unignoring the Boss”, we discussed the importance of investing more time and thought into the relationship with a boss. Quoting that last newsletter, “When taking a weighted ranking based on time spent with a person, a work boss will likely take the #1 or 2 spots. But it is not uncommon for someone to spend more weekly hours with their boss over their own spouse.”
In this newsletter, we will focus on the other side of the relationship: Unignoring the Employee. Many of your patients likely manage employees.
Whether they realize it, they play a critical role in their employees’ mental health. They set the company/team culture by the types of people hired, promoted and fired.
Being a proficient manager requires a dedicated amount of time outside of actual desk work.
Managers sometimes dedicate at least 50% of their time to coaching, hiring and promoting.
Why do people decide to become managers?
Typically companies pay a higher salary to managers. In addition, sometimes the only promotion path is to be a manager. Many jobs require a big team to increase their scope of work. As their scope increases, their team grows and promotion opportunities become available.
Being manager can also be very satisfying. Helping grow and promote your people is very rewarding. Many managers have claimed that a promotion for one of their employees felt as good as if they were promoted themselves.
But why should you care?
If your patient treats their managerial role as an afterthought, they will likely face downstream stress. When employees aren’t properly managed, team productivity will decline. When reporting to engaged, emphatic bosses, employees are more ambitious and are bias for action.
Employees that are backed by their boss will take more pride in their work and produce output beyond the bare minimum.
Bad bosses lead to employees quitting. With the current hot job market, employee churn is as high as ever given the options out there. Employees quitting creates a 3-6 months vacancy and consumes 40+ hours of time to interview and hire a new candidate. This all contributes to your patient’s stress levels.
Advice to consider during sessions.
In this newsletter, we will focus on the other side of the relationship: Unignoring the Employee. Many of your patients likely manage employees.
Whether they realize it, they play a critical role in their employees’ mental health. They set the company/team culture by the types of people hired, promoted and fired.
Being a proficient manager requires a dedicated amount of time outside of actual desk work.
Managers sometimes dedicate at least 50% of their time to coaching, hiring and promoting.
Why do people decide to become managers?
Typically companies pay a higher salary to managers. In addition, sometimes the only promotion path is to be a manager. Many jobs require a big team to increase their scope of work. As their scope increases, their team grows and promotion opportunities become available.
Being manager can also be very satisfying. Helping grow and promote your people is very rewarding. Many managers have claimed that a promotion for one of their employees felt as good as if they were promoted themselves.
But why should you care?
If your patient treats their managerial role as an afterthought, they will likely face downstream stress. When employees aren’t properly managed, team productivity will decline. When reporting to engaged, emphatic bosses, employees are more ambitious and are bias for action.
Employees that are backed by their boss will take more pride in their work and produce output beyond the bare minimum.
Bad bosses lead to employees quitting. With the current hot job market, employee churn is as high as ever given the options out there. Employees quitting creates a 3-6 months vacancy and consumes 40+ hours of time to interview and hire a new candidate. This all contributes to your patient’s stress levels.
Advice to consider during sessions.
- Companies don’t invest heavily in manager training. Your patient should consider their own relationship with their manager to help develop empathy for their own employees. They should reflect on when they’ve been the happiest and most successful at work. How did their boss contribute to that. They should practice those lessons with their own employees.
- Remind your patient that their employees may likely fear or be intimidated by them. They shouldn’t be advised to completely deconstruct the company hierarchy, but they should ensure enough dialogue and risk tolerance (i.e., allowing employees to experiment and fail) to have the best version of their employee.
- Invest in employee 1:1 sessions. These shouldn’t be used for status updates on projects. Employees own this time slot and should discuss their careers and goals with them. If employees still hesitate to discuss their careers, then they should actively bring it up by asking for example, “In exactly 1 year from now, what would cause you to say you had a successful year.”
- Encourage your patient to also have team goals outside of the day-to-day business. That could mean setting goals such as number of team promotions, new patents filed and number of trainings completed. Celebrating team success creates a sense of culture and belonging.
- Remind your patient that there is no one size fits all management style. In fact, they should adapt their management style to every individual on their team. People have different talents and work in different ways. Your patient’s goal is to lean in and maximize everyone’s talent.
- Humans tend to be biased towards others that resemble them. Remind your patient to avoid having a “golden child” on the team, who will likely be someone like them (i.e., similar work backgrounds, etc.). This is easily sensed and can demotivate other employees.
- Empathy does not mean being soft. There are bad employees who will go out of their way to hurt their boss. Nothing will drive out a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one.” Being a good boss also means knowing when to put your foot down.