Managers, both top- and middle- managers, have difficult positions in which they receive a lot of criticism from their employees.  

Top managers are often too far away from the people so employees’ critics are for them in general rather abstract. This is different for middle managers. On a daily basis they are in contact with their employees and they have to deal with the everyday operational problems of the people while at the same time they feel the heavy responsibility to achieve the goals for their department.

The job title ‘manager’ can make someone feel proud, it gives someone a status, but the daily practice is often less stimulating because of the critics and stress that comes with the job.

Managers belong to one of the ‘stress-risk job categories’ and especially middle managers often have a difficult task because they risk to get ‘hamburgered’ between the managers above and the employees under.

Middle managers also have a tough time in many organisations because their productivity and contribution is regularly questioned. Often they are seen as ‘bad villains’ by their employees who have spent years to create theories why their supervisors seem so inadequate or stupid.

Funny illustrations of this can be found in popular television series like ‘The Office’ and ‘Office Space’ or in books like the ‘Dilbert Principle’.

The famous ‘Peter Principle’ states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence which illustrates that there indeed is some truth in such critics.

Do Middle-Managers contribute to productivity?

The most important relationship in a company is between the employee and their manager or supervisor. The manager may hire, fire, assign work, instruct, motivate and reward workers.

Several models of productivity and incentives have built some subsets of these functions in economic terms, but there exists not much research that demonstrates the real importance of management behaviour and the way how their productivity or contribution is measured.

Studying the role of mid-level managers poses a challenge to economists for a couple of reasons. Bosses, by definition, manage people. And not all people do jobs that can be easily quantified. By extension, it's hard to boil down their supervisor's performance to an easily analysed set of numbers. Meanwhile, it's not always clear whether a team of workers is successful because of their manager, or in spite of them.

Good news for middle-managers

Now there is a clear research that gives concrete insight and evidence on the important existential question whether managers actually do anything useful.

In a study published in August 2012 by Edward P. Lazear of Stanford University, one of the most important conclusions drawn is that talented managers not only exist, but that they do something very specific: they contribute, they teach and they are productive.

Four years of research

The study (www.nber.org/papers/w18317) was conducted from 2006 till 2010 with ca. 24.000 employees and ca. 2000 managers working in a large, service oriented company. The employees were assigned to a single repetitive task that was carefully tracked and timed by computers. They also switched managers roughly once every four months. In short, it was the sort of work environment you might see at an in-house IT department or a customer service call centre.

It allowed the researchers to see if there would be middle managers who consistently generated higher productivity among different teams of employees. 

The three most important findings

1. The choice of the manager is important. There is substantial variation in management quality as measured by the effect on employee productivity.

Replacing a manager who is in the lower 10% of management quality with one who is in the upper 10% of management quality increases a team’s total output by about the same amount as when you would add one employee to a nine member team.

Using normalization, this implies that the average manager is about 1.75 times as productive as the average employee.

1. The managers’ primary and most impactful activity is teaching skills that persist.
2. Efficient assignment allocating the better manager to the better employees because good managers increase the productivity of high quality employees far more than that of low quality employees.

What were the good managers doing right?

The researchers considered two possibilities. Either a boss might have been really good at motivating their team (e.g. they were a cheerleader or maybe an authoritarian drill sergeant) or they might have taught employees long term lasting skills (e.g. they were coaches).

By looking at how well workers sustained their productivity after switching supervisors, the research team concluded that: teaching and coaching accounted for about two-thirds of a manager’s impact on the employees' productivity. This is mighty important to think about if you are a manager!!

A critical question

These results come from a deep research into the workings of one single company engaged in the post-industrial equivalent of basic assembly work. We have no proof how a similar study would result in companies with creative professionals or higher skilled employees!

Based on this research and with reference to the famous ‘Hawthorn studies’ and similar, I dare to extrapolate these findings to a general conclusion what makes a good manager: Teaching, developing and coaching your employees is realising long-term quality improvement.  

What is the secret to be(come) a good and productive manager?

If you want to become the best manager you have to get rid of your outdated management style because the management role is in a major transition.  The old days of command-and-control leadership are changing in what might be better named as a trust-and-track method, in which people are not just told what to do, but why they are doing it.  More specific, management is moving from transactional leadership to transformative leadership. And there's no turning back.

We are in the era of strength based management and leadership.

By creating a company with a clear purpose and clear values, you will find your employees connect themselves to something bigger, and that increases productivity. In other words, a culture of engagement and commitment leads to greater customer loyalty and thus to better financial success.

Instead that the balance sheet drives the business and determines all other decisions, it really is your people who drive your business. Committed employees are creative and proactive; they put the customer first, deliver great service, boost customer loyalty and so generate your turnover and profit.

Here are a few tips to bring this into your daily practice: 

A few actions you might take

1. Instead of the need to control every aspect of your employees manage ‘empowerment’, the ability to give your people the responsibility for their own tasks, even the responsibility to make mistakes without blaming them.
2. Instead of pretending you know everything create a team of your people and trust them. ‘Belbin’ is e.g. an excellent tool to create effective and cooperative teams and teamwork.
3. Practice management by watching and listening, engaging in conversation, inviting for and implementing the ideas presented to you.
4. Instead of investing in technology, procedures and rules to increase productivity invest in your people, train and coach them. The financial results are proven (see a previous column at: (http://www.poslovni-savjetnik.com/blog/management/john-lodder-higher-results-and-profits-excellent-human-resource-policy)
5. Instead of demanding change and being very specific about what you want remind that it might be better to nurture change as a constant factor in business life. Therefor invite your employees to come up with their best ideas and give them credit for it. Together they know more than you alone.
6. Stop discussions about more money or material incentives; authenticity and valuing your people have a bigger impact on their motivation and their satisfaction.

Of course there are many more actions you can take to become a strength based manager. Ask yourself which of these practices you are already using. There is never a better time like today to start something new.

JohnLodder M.A., MSc.
If you would appreciate more information please contact me at:
www.balance-consultancy.com
info@balance-consultany.com

Poslovni savjetnik pratite putem Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter