The 3 Roles of an Effective Manager
With employee retention a top priority for many organizations and a decline in employee engagement and job satisfaction, team performance and overall organizational effectiveness can suffer.
While organizations may have a variety of tools to address these issues, they can easily overlook one of the biggest opportunities for immediately improving employee retention, engagement, and performance: Giving managers the tools they need to effectively manage people and performance.
In the State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, Gallup identifies the manager as the “linchpin of engagement,” reporting that 70% of team engagement is attributable to an employee’s direct manager.
Unfortunately, managers may not have the skills to engage their team members in a way that positively impacts employee engagement and retention. Indeed, they may have the opposite effect:
Repeatedly addressing the same performance issues rather than collaborating with their direct reports to identify the core issue and create a solution.
Getting frustrated that their direct reports won’t “just do better,” leaving team members equally frustrated at not having a specific objective or path to get there.
Avoiding difficult performance conversations, resulting in poor performance that can drag down the performance of an entire team.
Having unproductive performance conversations that fail to produce a measurable positive outcome.
Leaving team members feeling stuck because they don’t see opportunities for growth, development, and advancement within the organization.
Focusing solely on managing their team’s output, and failing to manage the human element of the workplace (often because they simply lack the interpersonal skills).
Therefore, it’s critical that managers—these linchpins of engagement—have the skills necessary to build and maintain relationships with their direct reports that improve both performance and overall job satisfaction.
An Effective Manager is a Coach, Manager, and Leader
One of the approaches we’ve used in training over 4,000 managers to improve performance is to break down the key roles that an effective manager plays on a daily basis:
Coach: Collaborating with their team members by helping them to find solutions themselves; to pursue opportunities for growth and advancement; and to guide them along the way.
Manager: Setting expectations with team members about specific targets, identifying concrete action steps, and getting commitment and follow-through.
Leader: Helping team members see the big picture, including how their performance impacts larger departmental and organizational goals.
Role #1: Coach
First, managers must act as coaches, which means guiding direct reports to finding answers and solutions rather than solving the problem for them. When managers act as coaches, they constantly increase their direct reports’ capability and independence, which improves performance and can lead to a more collaborative workplace culture.
Managers must possess several key skills to coach their employees, but the hallmark behavior of a manager playing the role of coach is asking open-ended questions that get their team members thinking and engaging:
How would you go about solving this?
Where have you looked for answers? Where else could you look?
What ideas do you have?
What steps can you take?
What can you do differently to get a different result?
When coaching team members, managers must also have the skills to respond to their direct reports’ answers. Those skills include:
Actively listening to their responses and paraphrasing their answers, not only to make sure they understand, but also to make their direct reports feel heard.
Asking follow-up questions to dig deeper and get to the core issue rather than moving on to the next topic with the first issue still unresolved.
Offering direction and guidance, which may include sharing their own experience, suggesting solutions, and giving positive encouragement and feedback.
In our Coaching and Developing Your Team and Improving Performance programs, we call this the Ask-Listen-Tell (ALT) Framework—because if managers can ask deep questions, listen actively, and tell their direct reports their perspective, the conversation will be much more likely to produce a positive outcome.
Role #2: Manager
Second, managers must actively oversee the performance of their direct reports, including setting clear expectations, getting commitment, and holding people accountable. Whereas coaching direct reports is a more collaborative approach, managing them accounts for the fact that managers are ultimately responsible for their team’s performance, and therefore must act accordingly.
One helpful way to think about this role of managing is as closing the gap between is and should—discussing the difference between specific targets (what the team member should be doing) and specific metrics and behaviors (what the team member is doing). As managers close that gap, they dramatically reduce the variation in individual and team performance.
A key skill managers need in this context is getting their team members to take responsibility for closing that gap, which can be achieved by using the same skills of asking and listening:
How do you see your performance in this area?
What do you think is the reason for the gap between your performance and your target?
What do you think is the impact on our customers when you miss the target?
What is the impact on the company? To our team?
What ideas do you have for closing this gap?
What will you commit to do moving forward?
Role #3: Leader
Finally, managers must play the the role of leader—motivating, inspiring, and encouraging team members by helping them see the big picture, including:
Where we are going as a company
Why that matters (to the company, team, associates, and customers)
How each team member fits into that vision
To lead in this way, managers must tell their own leadership story to communicate what they’re passionate about, what they’re committed to, and why they’re so committed. When managers connect with and inspire their team members, performance, engagement, and team culture can all improve.
Additionally, managers have the opportunity here to ask their team members similar questions, which is another strategy for helping them see the bigger picture:
What is your understanding of where we are headed as a company?
Why do you think that is important to our clients, our customers, our company, our team, and to you?
What is your understanding of the role you play in helping to accomplish our vision?
When They Have the Right Skills, Managers Can Transform Your Organization
When managers have the skills to engage their team by showing up as coaches, managers, and leaders, they can improve performance and job satisfaction and reduce turnover, which ultimately leads to a more effective and profitable organization.
