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People are truly an organization's greatest asset. So, how do we fully unlock their potential?
Managers are multipliers. They shape culture, drive results, and create an environment where employees thrive or disengage. According to Gallup's recent State of the Global Workplace report, managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement.
As an HR leader, you may wonder why this should be on your radar.
Simply put, managers are your boots on the ground. They embody your culture, manage conflicts, ensure compliance, and influence key metrics like turnover and employee well-being. The success of your organizational initiatives often hinges on how well your managers lead people to execute them.
The impact of managers on the employee experience
Consider this striking insight: managers influence employee mental health more than spouses, doctors, or therapists. This statistic underscores how central managers are to employee engagement and mental health.
Gallup's report further illustrates the connection:
- Across countries, when managers are engaged, employees are more likely to be engaged
- In best-practice organizations, three-fourths of managers and 7 in 10 non-managers are engaged
Managers are the conductors of the workplace orchestra. They allocate resources, shape strategy, and set the cultural tone through their actions and decisions. Their influence permeates every aspect of the work environment.
Due to this effect, equipping managers to handle workplace challenges has never been more important or needed.
The benefits of manager training
Spring Health President and Co-founder Adam Chekroud points out that “the workplace is often the cause of many mental health issues. And particularly when you look at that inflection point within the organization of managers… A lot of first time managers were promoted because they were strong ICs (individual contributors), and they’ve now picked up these additional people management responsibilities. It's a very stressful life event. And people have woefully not trained for that transition.”
People develop into leaders through different pathways, but leadership always involves a journey that requires time, intention, and consistent practice. Leadership entails skill sets that can be developed through training.
The benefits of investing in this training include:
- Driving results by fostering a strong sense of team purpose and accountability
- Leading and inspiring teams through periods of change
- Enhancing communication through effective coaching, constructive feedback, and handling difficult conversations
- Navigating stress and promoting overall well-being
These skills are important because managers have an outsized impact on the workplace. Now, let’s explore how this applies to your organization.
Managers face complex new challenges
There’s never been a more challenging or complex time to be a manager. The pandemic transformed managerial roles in ways that have proven enduring, as hybrid work environments are now the norm for many organizations.
Managers with remote or hybrid teams have to understand how their people are doing from a distance. They must know how to:
- Pick up on subtle signs regarding how an employee is doing in their role
- Build trust and psychological safety remotely so an employee feels safe sharing when they need more help or support
- Role model vulnerability and openness
Addressing the impact of systemic forces on employees, such as politics, economic upheaval, environmental disasters, and social unrest, complicates managers’ work.
Managers are also expected to support their team members as coaches in today’s workplace.
Coaching is now central to the manager experience
Managers are not therapists and shouldn’t be expected to play that role. But in the modern workplace, they do have to show up to work with a lot more empathy and play more of an individual coaching role for their people than in pre-pandemic workplaces.
They are regularly required to navigate complex situations, play a multitude of roles, and may experience less of a sense of community with peers, causing loneliness.
These challenges are likely connected to Gallup’s report findings, showing that managers:
- Have more negative daily experiences than non-managers
- Are more likely to be looking for a new job
- Are more likely to be stressed, sad, angry, and lonely
It can be exhausting to coach multiple employees, support their mental health, and regulate their own mental health, all while ensuring performance metrics are met.
Managers as coaches: reframing employee narratives
We all construct personal narratives to make sense of our experiences, including those at work.
Dr. Martin Paulus emphasizes that it's not the objective severity of an event that matters most, but the internal story we create around it. He says, “It is the narrative that the person puts around this life event. And here's a unique and very important opportunity that we help people create resilient narratives around difficult life events.”
Managers are uniquely positioned to help employees positively shape their work narratives. Creating safe spaces for open communication and encouraging growth opportunities can foster resilience and a healthier perspective on workplace challenges.
For managers, this might look like modeling through:
- Sharing their past struggles and how they overcame them
- Helping employees contextualize difficult experiences within a broader perspective
At Spring Health, we emphasize a growth mindset in our manager training. This approach reframes mistakes as learning opportunities rather than character flaws.
The hallmarks of effective management
An exceptional manager balances high-performance expectations with robust team support. This support encompasses creating psychological safety, modeling a growth mindset, encouraging authenticity, providing continuous feedback, and applying situational leadership.
Simultaneously, they drive results by inspiring excellence and aligning the team with a clear, purposeful vision.
While this may sound idealistic, I've witnessed firsthand that developing these skills is not only possible, but essential for creating thriving, high-performing teams in today's complex work environment. So, let’s explore how to build these skill sets.
Empowering managers is key to organizational success
The gold standard for manager training includes the following:
- Pre-surveys: Measure manager behaviors before training.
- Blended learning: Combine self-paced modules with live, interactive sessions.
- Practical application: Provide opportunities to practice newly acquired skills.
- Peer coaching: Create cohorts for managers to share experiences and support each other.
- Continuous reflection: Encourage ongoing assessment and refinement of skills.
- Post training surveys: Measure manager behaviors following training.
- Program assessment: Analysis of the training’s impact on metrics like promotion rate, retention, and overall organizational results.
This approach addresses continuous skill development and the often-overlooked aspect of managerial loneliness. By fostering a community of peers, managers can find validation and support in their shared experiences, which is key to their mental health.
Becoming a manager is a lifelong process
Remember, great managers aren’t created overnight. Think about how you learn things. We don’t hear something once and then understand it instantly. Learning is an iterative process of learning, applying, reflecting, and adjusting.
Training aims to provide managers with a framework for approaching workplace challenges and allow them to adapt these skills to their unique situations.
For instance, through reflection, a manager might realize they haven't communicated their team's purpose, making motivation challenging. Training can help them recognize such gaps and develop strategies to address them while also learning to:
- Recognize signs of distress in employees
- Ask the right questions
- Read between the lines to what isn’t being said
- Provide support resources
- Promote open communication
- Model stress management techniques
- Build empathy and emotional intelligence
- Monitor and understanding workload, helping employees to re-prioritize
While manager training isn't a magic solution, it does provide a solid foundation, better-equipping leaders to guide their teams and drive organizational success.
The manager's journey: a continuous evolution
Becoming an effective manager is an ongoing process, not a destination. It involves continuous personal evolution, adapting to ever-changing business landscapes, team dynamics, technological advancements, and employee well-being.
Managers must constantly refine their skills and learn new strategies to effectively guide and support their teams.
While the work is never truly done, it’s immensely rewarding. Few things compare to the fulfillment of positively impacting someone’s career, life, and confidence.
Learn how investing in coaching for leaders and managers can drive innovation, inspire productivity, and propel organizational success.
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