Your "Yes" Means Money to Your Company

They should have seen it coming. After all, according to the authors of First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, "managers trump companies" when it comes to questions of retention, productivity and profit. In other words, you can work for the greatest company in the world, but if you've got a bad manager chances are you'll leave. If you stick it out for whatever reason, you'll become less productive, ultimately affecting your company's profit level.

Sure there are exceptions. But the statistics are pretty surprising. One comprehensive case study presented by Buckingham and Coffman compared stores with "good management" versus stores with "bad management." The latter group missed their profit goals "by a full 30 percent" while stores in the top group exceeded their profit goals by 14 percent. Likewise, stores in the bottom group lost 1000 more employees per year than top stores.

If you're a manager, wouldn't you prefer to fall into the top group? If you're an employee, I suspect you'd want the same; I know I wished for better bosses when I sadly walked away from what was initially a dream job.

So what's the catch? Is there any hope for bosses like my bad guys? Or are bad managers just bad managers, who will continue to drive away employees and adversely affect profits?

According to Buckingham and Coffman, there are twelve areas managers can address to turn results around. Like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs, these areas move from basic structure issues to more abstract issues of growth and development. Framed as questions that can be posed to employees, the ideal would be to work towards securing answers of '5' on a 1-5 scale, particularly on the first six questions, in order to make headway.

12 Employee Questions Every Manager Wants to Hear a Yes To

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?

2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?

5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?

9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

10. Do I have a best friend at work?

11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?

12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

It's not easy being a good manager. Some things surely seem beyond a manager's reach (how to guarantee an employee has a best friend at work?). But if managers and employees tackle the list together, more dream jobs might crop up to keep.

I'm happy to report I've got one now.

---

1. Have a boss story you'd like to share? Join us in our Bosses Writing Project and we'll link to you.

2. Management happens at home and in the classroom as well. How might you apply these principles in family or educational settings?

3. What parallels do you see in a church context? Or do you feel that these principles are better left in the boardroom?

People Walking Photo by ramenlover. Used under terms of Creative Commons Licensing. Post by L.L. Barkat, author of God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us.

• Tags:  
• business
• management
• work

Other Family Articles

When It's Well With Your Soul
by Jennifer Dukes Lee

93

Love Upside Down
by Billy Coffey

20

Most Popular Posts

Start-Up Lessons: Raising the Bar
by Claire Burge

42

What to Expect When You're...
by Jennifer Dukes Lee

80

We recommend logging in before posting comments

Reader Comments