What are the Five Things That Every Manager Must do But Aren’t on Your Job Description?
/If you are in charge of staff, there are five things that you are responsible for but that don’t directly appear on your Job Description.
These are the things that Effective Managers do. If you are not aware of them and don’t pay them specific attention you may as well be blindfolded.
What must every manager do (Including you)?
Managers are directly responsible for:
- Selection: Hiring the right staff;
- Fixing under-performance: Following a Fix or Fire process;
- Results: Getting the best performance from employees;
- Retention: Keeping staff because Staff turnover is extremely expensive;
- Balance: Balancing staff management with other responsibilities in a time efficient manner.
Focusing on these five things is absolutely crucial because:
1. Selection: Hiring the right staff
Every staff member was hired at some point in time. Hiring the right person for the job is the single most important thing that you can do as a manager. It doesn’t matter how good you are at managing and developing staff, the performance potential will be limited by the raw material that you start with. The problem is that hiring is relatively infrequent which means that we don’t get much practice. And a recruitment process gives us comparatively little information for a big decision. The combination of importance, difficulty and lack of practice creates a high-risk scenario, and a single bad hire can have extremely negative consequences. At the same time, getting good staff can create a world of difference.
2. Fixing under-performance: Follow a Fix or Fire process
There is a line below which an employee’s level of poor performance cannot be justified. This could be in an individual area or their general level of performance. This might be because of inheriting a bad performer, making a bad hire or some other change in circumstances. For whatever reason it is your responsibility as the manager to fix this. Underperformance is not uncommon with some research estimating that as much as 20% of the workforce is destroying instead of creating value. All too often addressing underperformance is avoided.
If one of your employees doesn’t deliver, senior management does not see this as the employee not performing, they see this as your failure to manage the situation. When you have an underperformer on your team it makes senior management think you are not skilled at selecting, managing or dealing with underperforming staff. Not fixing underperformance sends a message to the rest of your staff that you are willing to accept lower performance. Plus it makes the staff feel resentful because they feel like they are carrying more of the load. Both of these are highly de-motivational. All too often underperformance problems are seen as too difficult or unpleasant to fix and unacceptable levels of performance are routinely accepted. Payroll is expensive and competition is tough, the burden of unproductive staff is a drag on an organization like no other.
It is you as the direct line manager who is responsible to either “fix-or-fire” underperforming employees because there is no one better placed to do this. This is unfortunately a responsibility that comes with the job – the responsibility to do the right thing even when this is unpleasant. Please note that while I believe that firing (or relocating or managing out) an underperforming staff member is sometimes the right thing to do – I believe this is the avenue of last resort and it is the managers responsibility to first do everything they can do to fix the underperformance. (note: I write elsewhere about doing unpleasant things in a pleasant manner) Fixing underperformance is related to but different from improving results, which I speak about next.
3. Results: Getting the best performance from employees
It’s a simple fact of life: Workers are not that different to professional athletes. They will accomplish much more when they are encouraged and supported with a good coach than when they are left to their own devices. It’s not about micro-managing, it’s about the right sort of encouragement and support. Results matter. The results that you are responsible for as a manager aren’t just your own individual contributions; it is the sum of the contributions of all of your employees. This includes delivering results today and increasing performance over time. Competition will make you irrelevant if you don’t improve future performance and if you don’t deliver results today you (or your company) may not be around for tomorrow.
This isn’t about fixing underperformance, this is about improving performance in important areas for all of your employees. If you think this is does not apply to self motivated high performers then you should think about how many top performers (CEO’s, athletes, entertainers etc.) still use mentors, coaches and personal trainers to improve their performance. Managers that are good at supporting and encouraging their employees will vastly outperform managers who do not. You should ask yourself a simple question – does your management make your team perform appreciably better? Increasing the performance of your team isn’t just good for the company. Increasing the performance of your employee’s increases their rewards, promotability and job satisfaction.
4. Retention: Keeping staff- Staff turnover is extremely expensive
An average staff turnover rate of around 20% costs you about 10% of your annual payroll in direct costs (recruitment costs, training, lost productivity etc.) alone. Most of these costs are hidden because there isn’t an accounting item for “Cost of Lost Staff. This ignores the loss of valuable organisational knowledge and customer relationships. Getting results in a manner that loses you staff is unsustainable. Many managers can deliver short-term results, but the mark of a truly good manager is the ability to deliver results and keep (the right) staff. Retention isn’t about keeping staff on your team; it’s keeping staff in the company because a good manager develops staff to new levels.
The good news here is that if you can effectively engage your staff you will get the dual benefit of increasing performance and retention. The conventional wisdom is that you need to keep your staff happy with good working conditions and high pay. While these do play a part, a good manager knows how to have high staff satisfaction without resorting to “buying” it. (I write about this elsewhere). Whilst the staff turnover rate is not a very helpful indicator of management effectiveness, you can be sure that if your staff turnover is high you almost certainly do have some sort of management issue.
5. Balance: Balancing staff management with other responsibilities
A role consisting solely of staff management responsibilities is a rarity. Therefore being a so-called “working manager” is not a lone burden but the reality faced by most managers. Therefore managers need to be both effective and time efficient at managing their staff. Knowing what to focus on and having quick, proven methods and techniques is the key to being an Effective Manager. It's not about working harder, or becoming a business genius because these things are difficult to do. Being an Effective Manager is about spending your limited time and energy on what is most effective at producing results.
Those are the 5 items that aren’t explicitly on your Job Description but are the fundamental responsibilities of anyone who manages staff. These are also the 5 things that Effective Managers do. Being an Effective Manager doesn't require that you have any above average people skills or business knowledge. It means doing what produces the best results with the least effort. If you have methods and techniques to addresses these 5 items then you will find that the basics are taken care of and everything else becomes an order of magnitude easier. If you neglect these 5 areas you will find that you are exhausting your energy on dealing with symptoms. To you, managing people will feel like you are swimming against the tide.
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“Effective executives build on strengths—their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation, that is, on what they can do. They do not build on weakness. They do not start out with the things they cannot do.”
I hope you find these free insights and actionable tips helpful and inspiring. The best way to learn these skills is by doing one of the training modules and if you would like to learn more I would encourage you to take a course. This is how I support the creation of this content. Please see the side bar for course links or go to the training page to find out more.
