Gallup recommends three steps towards seeking the best manager your company needs.

Gallup’s latest book “It’s the Manager” reveals a vital finding: “Managers report more stress and burnout, worse work-life balance, and worse physical wellbeing than the individual contributors on the teams they lead.” They also account for 70% of the variance in their team’s engagement. And this is why taking charge of work stress is something that needs to begin with managers.

This, according to Gallup through an article by Shannon Mullen O’Keefe, is a call for leaders to think expansively about how to address a key organizational issue, stress, starting with managers, especially when they thrive to create a performance-oriented culture for their teams. Selecting managers who are good at this, and then freeing them up to focus on people development, is the foundation of a healthy workplace.

A full process

It comes as no surprise that we need good managers in our business. Effective managers create a workplace environment in which employees feel energized to achieve outcomes and integration between work and life outside work despite pressure. Poor managers contribute to inefficiencies and dysfunction, creating negative ripples among their teams.

This is why Gallup recommends three steps towards seeking the best manager your company needs:

1. Hire the correct prospect | Choosing managers with a natural ability to manage may seem obvious, but consultants who work with hiring managers every day point out that it’s not as obvious as it may seem. Attributes like subject-matter expertise can be significant glare factors that get in the way of hiring for natural leadership ability. To act, start by evaluating your hiring practices. Are you able to effectively identify the managers with a natural ability to lead teams?
2. Analyze current practices | Are your managers doing what they do best? If managers are not doing what they do best, perhaps leading a team is not their best role fit, which can result in stress for everyone. Get creative with how you think about development paths within your company. An alternative to the traditional hierarchical path for development is a growth path that may look more like a jungle gym or a spiderweb.
3. Alleviate sources of stress, then empower | The ultimate task of a manager. Managers can’t set others up for success if they aren’t set up for success first. Review the job descriptions for your managers and consider what you expect of those who lead your teams.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, recommends the following:

Take charge of your human capital strategy by putting careful selection of managers first. Make development about what people, including your managers, do best naturally. Instead of overloading your managers with responsibilities, make their job descriptions lean and aligned with their strengths.

Your managers will then have the time and space they need to focus on people, stay healthy themselves and lead your teams to achieve your organization’s mission.

Google discovered ten common behaviors across high-scoring managers. Click on the link below for the full story.

The Google manager