As the saying goes, employees don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. If your company embraces management styles that candidates and workers find distasteful, recruitment issues and retention trouble are almost guaranteed at your company.
Fortunately, by steering clear of management styles that employees dislike, you can keep turnover low. Here’s a look at the management styles professionals typically avoid and why they dodge them.
The Poor Communicator
Even if a manager is knowledgeable and capable, if they struggle with interpersonal communication or fail to relay critical information in a timely manager, employees may start to flee. A lack of quality communication leads to doubts and uncertainty. Additionally, if essential details don’t move freely from the manager to their team, it can increase workloads by creating the need for corrective actions after the initial approach is used.
Poor communicators also typically fall short when it comes to feedback. Without regularly delivered insights – both when something positive occurs or when a misstep needs fixing – employees aren’t clear about expectations and priorities. Often, this leads to confusion, which is never ideal.
The Micromanager
While employees appreciate clear expectations and sound guidance, overly controlling managers are off-putting. With a micromanager in place, there’s no sense of autonomy or ownership over one’s tasks. Plus, it creates a pressure-heavy atmosphere, particularly if the micromanager is also difficult to please.
Micromanagement long-term can also lead to mixed signals. In some cases, the desire for these managers to be involved in everything causes them to change processes, even if that isn’t necessary. These constantly shifting expectations prevent employees from having clear targets, which leads to frustration.
The Self-Oriented Manager
Managers are generally tasked with hitting specific targets, and they often have to guide employees to ensure that occurs. However, if a manager is only concerned with achieving their goals and ensuring they look good while also disregarding the needs and goals of their team, employees won’t be happy.
Self-oriented managers may also have a penchant for stealing credit. When they fail to recognize the contributions of their team, it leaves their employees feeling undervalued. As a result, disengagement and frustration become increasingly common, and that can cause some workers to head for the door.
The Uncertain Manager
While managers often need a little time to make key decisions, constantly seeming uncertain about the course of action a team should take harms the dynamic. Employees need to know that critical choices will be made quickly and with a reasonable degree of conviction. Without that, feelings of uncertainty spread.
If these managers also tend to hedge or shift course regularly since they don’t know the best approach, this can increase workloads and stress levels. Essentially, their indecisiveness means that employees have to tackle tasks on multiple fronts, and they won’t know which efforts were actually worthwhile until they’ve dedicated a significant amount of time to the activities, which is classically frustrating.
