Personally like my current manager, but generally think the concept of “employees” and “managers” is semi-doomed. TINYPulse — wrote about them once — just did a survey of 1,000 full-time employees (small sample size, yes) and asked them this basic question:
What would you change about your manager?
OK, cool. The results are summarized on Fast Company, and while 1,000 people is admittedly a small sample, I think it’s fairly universal. I conceptually kinda like what TINYPulse is trying to do as a whole, although I also think you can’t really solve an issue like “employee engagement” — real people stuff — with software.
Anyway, let’s get to their findings.
The top five things were:
- Communicate better
- Please retire or quit
- Work on your people skills
- I want a raise
- You need to be a better leader
Let’s pick this apart, eh?
Communicate Better: This is everything. If you’re a manager, you have deliverables from higher than you. (That’s called “hierarchy.”) Those are often unclear, because your own manager probably sucks too — and is in a ton of meetings as well — and so you push them down the chain in an even-more-unclear-way. This is, ultimately, why…
