Author: Mandar

This generation is marked by impatience, hunger, and a relentless drive to achieve their aspirations.

So, while money is definitely important, it’s not the most important driver in one’s career. The modern-day Manager today has come to realize, perhaps the hard way, that “more money will not help you retain talent”.

Money remains an important factor. It has always been. Today, however, there are other more important factors that make money, perhaps, an “important add-on”. The huge uncertainty and all-round churn triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic made this transition at the workplace all the more pronounced. The phenomenon where many sought to rediscover a sense of purpose and meaning in their career led many to quit, dubbed as the “Great Resignation”. Money, or the lure of lucre alone, will not help retain such driven employees.

Our research shows that the top five drivers for managers to retain teams are “Career Growth”, “Reliability”, “Guidance”, “Work-Life Balance”, and “Feedback Sharing”.

It’s important to understand why and how the manager drives employees to stay on (or quit, for that matter).

A great manager ensures that team members find ample room for performance-based growth in the organization. Team members then often look up to the reporting manger as a “reliable reporting manager”. In other words, a great manager fulfills all the commitments, and thus is “highly reliable”. Of course, a great manager must always be a master of his craft, and should be able to chip in, in hours of need. So, a great manager guides team members in ensuring that they perform at their optimal levels. Great managers also share regular, reliable feedback and encourage a work-life balance for the workforce.

According to research carried out by us at Great Manager Institute®, Manager-induced retention is as high as 42%. In contrast, an Organization-induced retention is only 14%.

Of course, the manager can also be the reason why employees quit. According to GMI research, 25% of the employees who quit, do so because of the manager, while organization-induced attrition stands at 19%.

Our findings at GMI are corroborated by other studies.

A 2021 McKinsey study, cited, said that “as many as 52% of employees left when they felt shortchanged by their managers” while “54% of employees quit when they didn’t feel valued by their organisations”.

The employee then plans a long-term career with the organisation, and remains aligned with its goals and objectives. It’s the “Great Manager” who develops this process into an organizational culture.

When the employee gets flexibility and freedom to perform, recognition at the workplace, and a sense of purpose, the employee experience and overall engagement become truly fantastic.

Of course, a good manager will have a price. Or, as a 2022 Harvard Business Review paper said, “the ability to extract value.

The paper, titled “The Real Secret to Retaining Talent” noted: “Nothing has matched topflight managers’ ability to extract value: Steve Ballmer made the vast majority of his $ 96 billion fortune by being Bill Gates’s first business manager. Eric Schmidt’s $ 2.4 billion net worth came from taking the reins of Google for a decade. Meg Whitman’s $ 5 billion (came) from serving as eBay’s CEO for 10 years,

A 2022 Harvard Business Review case study based on a case developed at MDI Gurgaon by Jyotsna Bhatnagar and Rakesh Bohra, said: “To keep pace with societal and technological change, companies today need to be flexible with – and offer flexibility to – their workforces.

The McKinsey article mentioned earlier said “If companies make a concerted effort to better understand why employees are leaving and take meaningful action to retain them, the Great Attrition could become the Great Attraction”.

It’s the Manager, then, who will have to step up and act as employees’ friendly stepping stone towards a fulfilling career.

The Manager — that crucial cog in the wheel-like organization — can then well and truly act as a catalyst to retain talent — by being flexible and firm, by being empathetic and farsighted.

So, yes, money is important. However, money is not the most important factor for the employee. And, to reiterate, more money alone will not help retain talent.

The modern-day Great Manager, then, will have to lead from the front, and act as the comrade-philosopher-guide to employees to help them perform at their optimal levels, while helping them lead purposeful careers and meaningful lives.

The message to promoters, founders and CEOs, then? While more money alone will not help you retain employees, a Great Manager will definitely be able to put together, and retain employees, committed towards long-term organizational objectives and values, and driven by excellence and meritocracy.

At Great Manager Institute®, our research reveals “the people manager’s” undisputed influence on Attrition, Accountability, Active Betterment and Ambassadorship in organisations. In one of our recent interventions with people managers of a leading Insurance Organisation we observed that when people managers invest in connecting with, developing and inspiring their team members, attrition fell by approximately 19%.

We looked at 4 engagement indicators to evaluate the impact of managerial effectiveness on employee engagement. These are.

1. Ambassadorship: My manager is highly competent in their work.
2. Accountability: Team members of My manager hold themselves accountable for their performance.
3. Active Betterment: My manager guides me to get better at my work.
4. Attrition: I want to work with this organization for a long time.

As expected, Effective People Managers outperform the others on all parameters. However, in a time when organisations are gearing to build talent from within and employ a more diverse workforce who will be expected to hit the road running, the influence of effective people managers on Active Betterment stands out.

Next, we double-clicked on these elements to determine the significance of managerial seniority.

Only 10% of Top management is seen as competent with their team members don’t experience them as effective people managers. This percentage rises to a meagre 20% at the front line managerial levels. This can have various negative impacts on both individual employees and the overall work environment. Incompetent management can have an impact on job happiness, professional development, and overall work experience, all of which influence an employee’s decision to stay or quit. However, the specific percentage can vary across industries, regions, and organizational cultures. Conversely, when managers are viewed as competent, a positive and encouraging environment is fostered, allowing employees to reach their full potential and make valuable contributions to the team’s and the company’s overall success.

Managers who are seen to be effective people managers are 2X as likely to drive accountability within their team. Driving accountability at work is crucial for business success. Achieving Goals, Problem Resolution, Collaboration, Building Trust, Reducing Conflict, and Driving Continuous Improvement are closely linked with the degree of accountability within teams. Employees are more likely to seek feedback, learn from mistakes, and collaborate with each other to achieve better results. An interesting observation here is that being inconsistently effective as a people manager is not really better than an ineffective people manager when it comes to driving accountability.

Not being able to guide team members to get better extends beyond individual performance to affect team dynamics, organizational culture, and long-term success, especially at leadership levels. While individuals face the consequences of Stagnation of skills and performance levels, and missed opportunities to rise within the organisation. Organisations run the risk of an over reliance on hiring, missed opportunities for innovation, lethargy towards change, stagnation in productivity. Guiding team members and being seen as an effective manager have a cyclical relationship. One positively feeds the other. However, when team members endorse their manager as an effective managers they are more likely to consider and act on the guidance provided by the manager

Employees are five times more likely to desire to leave a company if they believe their people manager is ineffective than if they believe the people manager is effective. At the top the challenge is higher. While employee attrition can be influenced by various factors such as inadequate compensation, lack of career growth, mismatched job roles, inadequate benefits, market opportunities; poor people managers are a growing concern. To us at Great Manager Institute®, there is a visible relationship between retention and managerial style. Managers that make a deeper connection with employees, engage in individual’s development and progress, and motivate via purpose and recognition address elements that cause stress and burnout, a lack of job satisfaction, and hence inspire greater retention.

As organisations race to survive, expand, and grab more markets and consumers, the rules have changed in the middle of the game. Organisations are and will continue to need to race hard to retain talent that can expand, and grab more markets and consumers.

Companies that invest in their human capital deliver more consistent earnings through difficult times, according to a 2023 McKinsey Global Institute report. An investment both emotional and monetary in developing people management style at all levels is no longer optional. It is an indicator of organisations that are truly future ready.

Consider this: Of the 8783 workers from the BFSI sector in India surveyed, a whopping 91.2% rated their respective managers as “respectful managers.” The said workers were managed by 1579 unique people managers. The workers were asked 21 questions in the survey.

As seen in the distribution, these managers are scattered across the matrix and only 12% of them are yelling their way to accomplishments.

Does this key finding reflect, in part, the optimism, excitement, and energy that the Indian BFSI sector has exuded lately?

The BFSI space is buzzing and a number of positives today are cited – “stressed balance sheets of the banks are a problem of the past”, and “India is among the fastest growing fintech markets in the world today,” to name two.

The sector is not without its share of challenges, though. They are, however, more in the nature of long-term challenges. The banks reported a staff turnover in excess of 30%, last year. At a larger level, it’s often argued that the BFSI sector is probably guided more by short-term imperatives.

Like individuals, organisations may too begin by focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. What are the current collective leadership strengths of India’s BFSI sector as represented by these 1579 managers?

We have highlighted 4 areas in which 90% or more managers were found to be generating positive experiences.

The research findings help one gain a nuanced perspective on the BFSI sector in this backdrop. What cannot be measured, cannot be assessed or improved. In this study, reassuringly, only 12.98% of the Managers were assessed to be “inconsistent” in 10 or more than 10 of the total 21 behavioural traits studied. On average a manager got all 5s on 4.26 areas

56% of the Managers were perceived to be “competent”.

For a sector that promises to deliver a lot more in the months and years ahead, this research offers valuable insights.

If India boasts of the world’s fourth-largest bank today, it’s courtesy of the energy that the ecosystem has come to be identified with, lately.

To cite another example, it’s only recently that India’s second-largest NBFC was formed. Surely, in this era of promise and optimism, consolidation and delivery, staff attrition shouldn’t be allowed to become a major problem. In fact, a talent pool of leaders and great managers should be developed to carry forward the good work.

This research, then, helps one identify good people leaders and makes a case for retaining them long-term. The survey also argues for grooming and developing high-potential managers in the now-buzzing sector.

Granular data, as arrived at through the research, can be used for leadership development and personalisation. This can also be used to weed out toxic managers from the workforce.

If India’s BFSI sector is to be guided by long-term objectives instead of just short-term imperatives, if the fintech industry is to touch the projected output of $ 1 trillion by 2030, sectoral people managers and leaders must lead by example, and they must lead from the front. To make that happen, the Survey findings provide a roadmap of sorts. It also calls for action – guided by a long-term plan.

Great Manager Institute® can help business leaders concerned with building a leadership pipeline for their organisations with such nuanced analysis using our Leadership Analytics and Development Platform. This approach allows you to take a more surgical approach to build leadership capability and secure the future of leadership across the organisation.

Some leaders may not recognize their own strengths and weaknesses, leading them to overestimate their abilities or underestimate the impact of their actions on others. It is said that “leadership without self-awareness is like a ship without a compass- destined to drift aimlessly in turbulent waters”.

Leaders may focus too narrowly on certain aspects of a problem or situation, ignoring other important factors that could impact their decisions.

A leader’s excessive confidence can prevent them from seeking input from others or considering alternative viewpoints. Other experts of this subject Shaw and Karen Blakeley also found out in their research that one of the most common causes of leadership blind spots is pride bordering arrogance.

Leaders may fail to understand the individual strengths and potential of their team members, which can result in assigning tasks that are not suited to their abilities, resulting in failure.

Identification of blindspots is challenging yet necessary and the good part is, it is possible to do that. It is not a one-time process rather it is an ongoing process which requires leaders to be open-minded and show commitment towards continuous self-improvement. Here are some strategies that can help leaders become more aware of their blindspots

Encourage your leaders to reflect on their leadership style, behaviour and decision-making process and ask them to create their own Johari window. Johari window is a technique designed to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others.

Actively seek feedback from your team members, peers, and superiors. Create an environment where people feel comfortable providing honest and constructive feedback. Anonymous surveys or one-on-one conversations can be effective in gaining insights into areas where your leaders may have blindspots. Once this is done, the responses can be compared against leader’s self-reflection to determine if there’s any misalignment.

Some leadership assessments and tools are designed to identify blindspots. These tools can help you gain insights into your leadership strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to spot areas where your leaders might have blindspots.

Being surrounded with people of diverse background will provide a fresh and diverse perspective to the leaders and will help uncover some of their blindspots.

Organize leadership training and development programs that focus on self-awareness and emotional intelligence. These programs can help you uncover blindspots and develop strategies to address them.

Let’s move on to read more about the study participants and methodology of this study.

The study saw the participation of 4296 people managers and their team members from various organizations in India. Participants used GMI’s AI-powered people leadership assessment and development platform and completed a self-assessment questionnaire which was then followed by an anonymous team feedback survey (appendix 1). Our approach is inspired by the heuristic exercise created by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham – Johari Window, to help participants (people managers in this case) uncover and understand their leadership blindspots.

Both the self-assessment and the team feedback is based on a psychometrically reliable and valid people leadership assessment instrument that measures managers on 17 dimensions pertaining to people management competencies. These dimensions fall under three broad categories – Connect, Develop & Inspire in a framework. The framework helps in understanding how well do you connect with your team, develop their skills and inspire them to bring out the best in them (figure 1 ).

The data (Table 1) reveals that people managers display an optimism bias¹ on people management competencies like communicating candidly, involvement in decision making, caring for others, being reliable and setting right expectations. This indicates the presence of some unrecognized weakness which managers aren’t aware of- ‘people managers think they are doing a great job whereas their team members think otherwise. This is certainly an area of concern which need to be addressed.

The heatmap below presents a clear picture of how the team feedback analytics dashboard looks like. The shades of red point to a higher disparity between managers’ self-perception and their team members’ perceptions of various dimensions indicating the presence of leadership blindspots.

As per the data, five major leadership blindspots were identified for the dimensions mentioned below.

1. Candid Communication
2. Involvement in Decisions
3. Reliability
4. Care for Individual
5. Expectation Setting

Each of these dimensions were found to be significant blindspots for 70% or more than 70% managers. For rest of the dimensions, the trends were reversed where most of the team members rated their managers more favourably. Let’s delve deeper into each of these 5 dimensions and look at some of the ways to fix the gap.

Candid communication is perhaps the most powerful tool used by the leaders as well as team members to exchange views and important information. It plays a pivotal role in fostering a healthy and transparent work environment. It is particularly important for the leaders to communicate regularly, clearly and effectively with their team members – mainly because leaders are seen as the main figure who set standards and expectations, give instructions and guidance to carry out important tasks and take important decisions, impacting the entire team as well as business. A large part of communication is also listening to their team members’ feedback, ideas and concerns.

Present study revealed a substantial difference between the scores of managers and their team members indicating that leaders believe their communication to be very open, inclusive and fair whereas the team members feel otherwise. Absence of candid communication has its own downside and may lead to:

Candid communication helps ironing out differences between leaders and team members. However, absence of open communication would result in misunderstandings and unresolved issues leading to conflicts.

While open communication enables employees to discuss challenges, bottlenecks, and obstacles without fear of retribution. Absence of it will result in lack of discussions around any challenge or issue amounting to the big problems. Openness in communication allows for collaborative problem-solving, where multiple perspectives and solutions can be considered, leading to better decisions.

When employees feel safe to share their thoughts and ideas openly, it fosters the culture of innovation and creativity. However, when team members do not feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and viewpoints openly, the free flow of ideas get hindered compromising innovation and creativity.

In an environment of open communication, there is less room for rumours and gossip to spread. Employees are more likely to rely on accurate information rather than hearsay. However, when communication channels are restricted, team members rely on half-baked information leading to gossips.

To make managers aware of this blindspot, various interventions can be developed such as some programs on improving candid communication which will leave leaders with some food for thought. Managers need to be encouraged to have open dialogues with their team members. Furthermore, creating channels for feedback, such as timely surveys, suggestion boxes, or regular meetings, can also facilitate candid communication among people managers.

When managers involve others in decision-making, it leads to more robust, well-rounded, and inclusive choices, improving the overall effectiveness of an organization. However, not involving others in decision making process is a major blindspot; managers believe that they ‘know all’ and don’t need diverse perspectives to decide upon something. This exclusion of others has its own repercussions like, reduced buy-in and engagement from the team members, higher risk of errors and oversights, missed innovation opportunities and lack of diverse perspectives.

Managers may consciously include others in decision making process; a regular, timely session with team members having varied roles, expertise, and experiences can provide valuable and well-rounded information that those directly involved might miss. This practice will also facilitate a culture of collaboration, transparency, and shared responsibility, essential ingredients of growth and progress.

Becoming a more reliable leader is crucial for building trust and credibility among team members and stakeholders.  Being reliable means consistently following through the commitments and remain ethical and predictable in actions and decisions. Unfortunately, in the present study, a gap has been found between managers’ and team members’ perceptions which isn’t a good sign. Team members look up to their leaders and want to follow their path, however, in case, team members find their leaders to be inconsistent, their morale and confidence plummet, leading to doubts and uncertainties. Organizations may help leaders by conducting personalized sessions on self-reflection, integrity and trust. This can be followed by a personalized coaching by an expert.  By gaining insights and by practising to be consistent, leaders may become more dependable and trustworthy.

Caring for others is a fundamental aspect of leadership that leads to positive outcomes at both individual and organizational levels. A caring leader creates a supportive and empowering environment, where team members can thrive successfully, leading to increased performance and job satisfaction. Caring for others is also closely related to emotional intelligence, another critical leadership skill. It is usually said that leaders with high emotional intelligence can understand and empathize with their team members’ emotions, helping them address challenges and conflicts more effectively.

The data here highlights the gap between managers and team members indicating that team members expect more care and support from their managers while managers believe that they are already providing a good support! Managers are oblivious of the needs of their team members and thus not able to establish that bond!

To address this, managers need to prioritize the well-being of their team members, need to provide guidance, support, and opportunities for learning and advancement. Casual team catch-ups would help managers create that bond with their team members leading to more open and candid conversations. Further, managers may personally chat with a member having issues. Organization may also arrange for some emotional intelligence sessions to encourage managers to be more aware and cater to others’ emotional needs.

Setting expectations is a foundational, interactive process through which leaders give directions to the team members about the goals to be achieved, Key Result Areas to be met and clarity around what is expected from the team members. Not setting expectations can be a significant leadership blind spot! The present study highlights the fact that leaders think that they have set the expectations right however team members have different opinion regarding the same which may have adverse repercussions. When expectations are not clearly communicated by the leaders, team members may not properly understand what is expected of them. This lack of clarity can lead to confusion and uncertainty about their roles and responsibilities, which can result in suboptimal performance and productivity. It is important that leaders define roles, responsibilities, goals, and performance standards very clearly and keep checking the progress. Communicating these expectations transparently will foster a positive work environment, empower team members, and will have positive impact on the productivity and growth.