It’s the Manager
By Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

While the world’s workplace had been going through extraordinary historic change, the practice of management has been stuck in time for more than 30 years.
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Politics and policies won’t fix declining economic dynamism and declining productivity.
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Failing to maximise the potential of a team member is—to use a six sigma term—a defect.
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The new purpose of business and the future of work has to include maximising human potential.
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In America and around the world, the great global dream is to have a good job.
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A lousy job is one where you receive low wages and work less than 30 hours when you want to work full time.
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A good job is one where you work full time in an organization, with 30-plus work hours a week and a living wage pack.
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A great job has all the qualities of a good job but with one difference—employees are meaningfully engaged with fulfilling work and they experience individual growth and development at the workplace.
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Changing your culture begins by changing what CEOs and CHROs believe. Then changing what the managers in the organisation believe. And then changing how those managers develop every single team member.
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Changing demands of the workplace
- My paycheque to my purpose
- My satisfaction to my development
- My boss to my coach
- My annual review to my ongoing conversations
- My weaknesses to my strengths
- My job to my life
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Only 22% of the employees strongly agree that the leadership in their organisation has a clear direction for the organisation.
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The old boss to employee, command and control leadership environment has ‘worked’ when it comes to building process efficiency systems, engineering large buildings and building infrastructure. It does not work in a new model where employees demand coaching and collaboration to thrive.
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According to Gallup survey, the traits of most successful leaders can be distilled down to two elements:
- bring multiple teams together
- making great decisions
And these two determine whether an organisation is agile.
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For any organisation to change, its managers must be able to work together.
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Making great decisions involves…
- Knowing your limits
- Applying critical thinking
- Using analytics-driven evidence
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41% of employees strongly agree that they know what their organisation stands for and what makes it different from competitors.
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Culture determines your brand—how employees and customers view your company.
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Symptoms of a broken culture
- The inability to attract world-class talent
- Difficulty getting organic growth based on customer - employee interactions
- Leadership initiatives don’t go anywhere
- Lack of agility in responding to customer needs
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How to change a culture
- Identify your purpose and brand
- Audit all programmes and communications
- Reposition your management as coaches.
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Gallup researchers identified five innate traits that predict performance across jobs, and these are things to look for in hiring an employee:
- Motivation – drive for achievement
- Workstyle – organising work for efficient completion
- Initiation – taking action and inspiring others to succeed
- Collaboration – building quality relationships
- Thought process – solving problems through assimilation of new information
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5 questions employees ask when they join a company
- What do we believe in around here?
- What are my strengths?
- What is my role?
- Who are my partners?
- What does my future look like here?
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5 steps to building a strengths-based culture
- Start with the CEO, or it doesn’t work
- Require every employee to discover their strengths
- Build an internal network of strengths coaches
- Integrate strengths into performance management
- Transform your learning programmes
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Today, 35% of employees report changing jobs in the past three years. And nearly 50% of employees say that they are actively looking for a new job.
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What a successful exit looks like
- The employee feels heard
- The employee leaves feeling proud of their contribution
- You create a brand ambassador
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3 requirements of coaching
- Establish expectations
- Continually coach
- Create accountability
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Performance ratings reveal more about the supervisor than the employee
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Gallup analysis has three dimensions that statistically predict overall success in a role:
- Individual achievement
- Collaboration with team members
- Customer value
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One of Gallup’s biggest discoveries is: the manager or team leader alone accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement.
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Gallup has studied engagement levels of 3 million teams. The number of members in a team varied considerably.
Teams with fewer than 10 members have the highest and lowest levels of team engagement.
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Globally, 85% of employees are not engaged or are actively disengaged at work.
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A high development culture
- It is CEO and board initiated
- Educates managers on new ways of managing
- Practices companywide communication
- Holds managers accountable
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5 traits of great managers
- Inspire teams to get work done
- Set goals and arrange resources for team to excel
- Initiate work and push through adversity
- Build commitment through collaboration.
- Take an analytical approach to strategy and decision making
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Disrespect is toxic.
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Only 21% of employees strongly agree that their organisation is committed to building the strengths of each employee.
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Women face three challenges at work
- Unfair treatment
- Pay inequity
- Work - life flexibility
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Office layout has evolved. The three things employees want in office features are:
- Privacy when they need it
- Personal workspace
- Their own office
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Organisations that aren’t agile and that don’t have the capacity to adapt quickly will be overcome by their competitors—or put out of business.
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You cannot have a culture of agility until you equip your managers with the right development, clear expectations, ongoing coaching and accountability.
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When customer engagement increases, sales increases. Engaged customers do three things compared to a less engaged customers:
- Buy more frequently
- Spend more per transaction
- Pay a higher margin
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It’s the Manager
By Jim Clifton and Jim Harter