6 things the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently?

As 2018 comes to a close, having worked closely with clients on team-working and high-performance this year, let me gift you some reflection questions. Why not use these to capture your key learning from the year that’s been and to inform good practice for the one to come?

What do people and teams need – concretely - to deliver high performance?

What do managers and leaders provide for their staff in high performing organisations to unleash high-performance?

Six things! The Gallup Organisation has identified six items (out of a list of 10) scored highly by staff in high performance organisations. Provided with these items, staff out-perform competitors.

This list of six makes commercial and organisational sense. These six items inform strategy and action plans, organisation structure and job descriptions, recruitment briefs and management / leadership development programmes. If you run a staff survey, why not embed these into your questionnaire and map these items against prior results?

Of course this list sit alongside other lists… yet it resonates with a wide body of research from the 1960s (Hertsberg) and 1980s (Vroom and Lawler) to more recent material (David Rock – SCARF – 2006 and Google’s 2015 research on high performing teams).

So these are the six items (out of a list of 10) that staff in high-performance organisations consistently score more highly than staff in less performing enterprises:

1. I know what is expected of me at work
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development

Isn’t it interesting that the first half of these items are about being resourced to do a good job, the second half about feeling valued as a person? People perform best when they are equipped (have the skills and resources) to do a good job AND feel appreciated. Facts AND feelings matter!

How would you score these for yourself?

How would your team, your key colleagues, staff within your organisation score these?