What no one saw coming, however, was the sheer size of that correlation—something Gallup calls “the single most profound, distinct and clarifying finding” in its 80-year history. The study showed that managers didn’t just influence the results their teams achieved, they explained a full 70% of the variance. In other words, if it’s a superior team you’re after, hiring the right manager is nearly three-fourths of the battle.
You can see where that would make sense. If you have a boss that people want to work for, then you’ll have a good staff. If you have a boss that turns people off, the good people will leave and you’ll be left with people who can’t or won’t go elsewhere.
So if the economy sucks, we can all just blame our bosses?
I won’t even work for me, much less anyone else!
I’m suspicious. Going to the Gallup site, I see they’ve changed, rebranded, from StrenthsFinder to CliftonStrengths, so they sell a program ($49.99) to help find the 34 strengths of each.
Actually, this sounds like it might be useful — a team does it’s best work with the team members mostly doing what they’re good at doing. But that’s not quite getting the managers.
They have a big March, 2014 article on Why Great Managers Are Rare.
https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/167975/why-great-managers-rare.aspx
Only about 1 in 10 have the “talent” to be good managers. Being great at non-management work doesn’t mean you’ll be a great manager, even after coaching.
Still, w/o looking beyond the paywall of WSJ, the details of explaining 70% of the variance on the managers is likely to have more hand waving than I’m comfy with.
I’d expect to see more orgs that are willing to give non-managers some management experience on temp pj teams (1-2 years?) and see which pj teams are well managed.
Still, I agree with Gallup, which finds that great managers have the following 5 talents:
They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees 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 based on productivity, not politics.
I sure don’t see the accountability in gov’t.
“I sure don’t see the accountability in gov’t.”
Then you probably haven’t talked extensively to the lawyers. In a lot ways government isn’t about directly doing what it is supposed to be doing, but minimizing the inevitable costs of litigation, because no matter what the government does or does not do, it is going to be sued. So a lot of decision making is about managing legal risk, as that is the best way to make the most of an agency’s or department’s resources.
Hence the downfall of the alleged “populist/nationalist” movement in US politics: they hired the wrong manager.
Does it mean anything that none of the “very serious people” wanted to sign up for a populist/nationalist campaign? The really weird thing, to my view at least, is that a Republican running on Trump’s agenda (as stated in the campaign), actually would have a decent shot on delivering on a lot of Trump’s promises, which is unlike what you see on the Democratic side for populism. But a Republican president, if they wanted, could definitely improve border control and deport a lot of unauthorized immigrants. Hell, they could most of it done with just giving a path to DACA folks, because the Democrats can be bought very cheaply. They could easily protect Medicare and Social Security. They could cut taxes (which Trump did). They could probably get some sort of infrastructure bill through. And they could BS their way through foreign policy with Fox News helping them out in the propaganda department. They could probably also do a better job than Trump is doing at the trade war with China.
That’s the thing that really baffles me; politically, Trump’s agenda is actually achievable, and popular, yet no one wanted to touch it, and even after Trump proved it to be a winning formula, Republicans in Congress still thought that spitting in the wind (i.e. opposing the agenda in various ways) was a better idea than trying to support it and shape it to be even better for them electorally. And I say this as someone who did not vote for Trump and doesn’t like him.
Actually, Cruz did pick up the populist banner, but maybe he was unelectable (especially after Trump exposed his father as having been part of the JFK conspiracy ;-)), so put him aside. Other than in his largely self-defeating rhetoric, Trump never pursued, in a competent fashion, the “nationalist/populist” part of his own agenda after getting elected. On immigration, he’s been a disaster (unless you think what’s happening at the border is some sort of triumph). The failure is his – he never lifted a finger to change anything until after the GOP lost the House, when it was too late.
You’re right in saying a Republican president could have done more – Trump just didn’t do it. Because (1) he doesn’t care (as evidenced by his recent blabbing about wanting even more legal immigration than the excessive amount we get now) and (2) if he did care, he has no idea how to go about it, or of whom to appoint to implement it.
What Trump’s accomplished, such as it is, is the old-time establishment Republican agenda of lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy, less business regulation, and appointing conservative judges. I support most of that (although the need for cutting marginal personal income tax rates eludes me), but that is exactly what Jeb Bush would have delivered as president.
Sorry, I don’t buy that Trump has achieved some sort of historic victory on trade.
Bottom line: that Trump was the only “nationalist/populist” (or even pretend “nationalist/populist”) available does not change the fact that he’s a terrible manager and is failing to advance that agenda in any meaningful way.
I despise Trump and did vote for him. Against the authoritarian, hate-mongering, social-dysfunction-promoting monstrosity the Democratic Party has become, I would vote for a presidential candidate even worse than Trump.
Good managers retain the best teams doing the most interesting work. It’s part of the definition of being a good manager. As far as I’m concerned it’s a truism and not very interesting.
It’s not entirely being popular. Good managers see the strengths and weaknesses of their people (“Bill knows the ins and outs of this database, but he keeps tinkering with it rather than making thins usable. Alicia has just enough patience to watch what he’s up to and enough lack-of-patience to remind him of what the team is supposed to be working on.”) and assign tasks accordingly. They make judgments about what parts of the job are major and need lots of people and time and which parts can safely be neglected {“No, Allan, we will not have two secretaries work full time inscribing pretty margins around all the text on every page, even if that Air Force guy does think it looks neat.” This is NOT a made-up example.) They keep track of their schedules and budgets. And they get their projects done, with work that satisfies a customer.
A pleasant personality is very nice, of course, but it’s not the main thing.
One underrated management skill is decision-making, and often even awareness of decisions that need to be made. Government has a good example – lots of people, even politicians, are for reducing taxes, against cutting defense or entitlement spending, and against deficits. Since deficits = expenses – taxes, and almost all of the expenses are either defense or entitlements, that clearly can’t work. Those are conflicting goals and a decision is necessary. If management doesn’t make a good decision, events make a decision for them without regard to its quality, sooner or later.