Did you know that it takes a pay increase of approximately 20% before employees will leave a great manager? According to a Gallup Panel, great managers reduce turnover more effectively than any other role in an organization. They are also the most reliable and time-tested performance drivers Gallup has ever discovered.
And research shows that promoting leaders from within is the best approach. This results in greater productivity, greater employee buy-in, and better retention rates.
Why? Part of it has to do with the manager’s hard skills, the ability to do their employees’ jobs. A recent Joblist study found that nearly 70% of the respondents preferred to be managed by the promotion of a seasoned company veteran who climbed the ranks.
If they believe that promotions are managed effectively, a 2018 survey of over 400,000 people in the United States determined that employees are more than two times as likely to give extra effort at work and to plan for a long-term future with their company. They are also more than five times as likely to believe their leaders act with integrity.
However, great managers don’t become that way overnight or on their own. Managers need a completely different set of skills than they required as individual contributors. This means they need to learn how to be a manager, to develop the interpersonal and management skills necessary to increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention.
It also means they need to develop a new mindset because it is a very different thing to manage others doing a job that you used to do yourself. New managers need to learn how to let go, delegate, and manage performance without micromanaging.
They have to become comfortable directing former co-workers. Those relationships are likely to change as the new manager takes actions that the employees might not like. The manager will need to learn to seek their respect rather than their friendship.
In addition, managers promoted from within need to manage the other employees who vied for the position and were unsuccessful. It takes emotional intelligence and effective communication skills to validate the employees’ feelings without becoming defensive, and to recognize how to support their professional growth without causing them to become defensive!
Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year. Unfortunately, Gallup reports that good managers are rare because they have a specific skill set that many people do not have.
If you want to ensure that your newly promoted managers have the skills they need to be effective, schedule to speak with Deborah Laurel to discuss how structured peer learning groups can quickly and easily help them: https://bit.ly/314ztux
