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Managers Behaving Badly!

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Managers are supposed to get stuff done. They're supposed to coordinate resources, build capable teams, and deliver shareholder value. We all work for a manager in one form or another. And while work isn't the sole domain of life, having a sense of meaning and making an impact are reasons #4 and #5 for coming to work . We want to be fairly rewarded for doing good work. And for that, we need good managers. So how many good managers have you worked for in your career? Probably not that many. In fact, you'll be lucky if you can nominate more than two. And like most of us, you've probably left more than one position due to a toxic boss. What is the cost of managers behaving badly? And what, if anything, can be done about it? Cost of Bad Managers What's the cost of bad managers? M ore than $22 trillion according to the US Government Accountability Office. That's how much t he 2008 financial crisis cost the US economy , largely attributed to reckless inv...

You Want Performance? Here's How!

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The performance dilemma “Our latest staff engagement results were really quite bad” admitted the HR Director of a mid-sized Asian Financial Services company when I met with her recently. “Staff are really disappointed with their managers”, she shared with me. “Yet, many of those same managers have been sent on very expensive leadership programs in Europe and North America”, she declared. “And now I don’t have enough budget left to get performance up!” Of course, there is great prestige in sending managers away to a castle in Europe or to an Ivy League campus in the USA for a week. But what’s the return on investment? Could that same budget have been spent more effectively? In the “open source era” HR Directors are finding themselves backed into a corner. Their companies are demanding higher performance targets despite sluggish economic growth almost everywhere. And the workforce of the future – the millennials – are questioning whether they even want to be part of a company stru...

Six Principles for the Disconnected Leader!

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In 2016 McKinsey & Company conducted a study of more than 52,000 managers, 86% rated themselves as inspiring and good role models. In the same year, a Gallup engagement survey found that 82% of their employees see their leaders as fundamentally uninspiring. What's wrong with this picture? There is a stark disconnect between how leaders see themselves and how others see them. You could put this down to attribution bias - we attribute only good explanations for our own behavior. But the disconnect is bigger than that. When it affects tens of thousands of managers across thousands of companies it becomes systemic. And it results in the following dysfunctions: Mangers don't listen to feedback and so they don't change their behavior. Employees feel trapped with managers who are not leading or guiding them. Managers don't accept contrary views or ideas which disrupt their view of themselves. Employees don't speak up for fear of being shut down. Creativit...