Gallup: 60% of managers fail in their first 24 months. Reason: no training.
Managers aren’t just part of the solution to an organization’s success; they are the primary reason. 1 A massive 92% of HR executives feel managers are essential to their organization’s overall success. 2 (What were the other 8% thinking?) Managers are the primary drivers of a positive work environment. They drive 70% of employees’ desire to do their best at work (often called employee engagement). 3 While managers drive employee engagement, only 31% of employees in the U.S. are fully engaged. Those who are fully engaged are doing everything they can to move the organization forward. The percentage of fully engaged employees worldwide is dismal 20%. 4 Gallup research has identified a way to increase employee engagement to 80%. Yes, you read that correctly. A 2024 Gallup study states that 80% of employees who received worthwhile feedback in the past seven days were very engaged. This high level of engagement applies to all workers, regardless of how many days they telework. 5 Not surprisingly, there isn’t a magic wand that can make this happen in a single step.
Having meaningful conversations and providing worthwhile feedback to your direct reports weekly dovetails perfectly with employees’ desire to receive feedback at least weekly. What do you provide your direct reports with worthwhile feedback on? To see all the steps to reach this point, let’s begin at step #1. Organizations must create effective strategic plans that contain measurable objectives. Next, all employees must understand which of the strategic plan objectives they support. This allows them to understand their role in their organization’s overall direction and where they fit in. This may seem obvious to some of you, and it certainly isn’t complicated. But the reality is that this is rarely done. Strategy in corporate America gets far less attention than it should. Research published in the Harvard Business Review reveals that 85% of senior managers dedicate under an hour to strategy monthly, and only five percent of their employees have a basic understanding of their organization’s strategy. 6 This is an epic fail. Your employees are the people closest to your customers, and they shouldn’t know the least of anyone about the organization’s strategy. A friend of mine refers to it derisively as ‘shelfware.’ Just another document that senior leaders, or a single staff office, creates and nothing is done with it. It collects dust on a shelf, thus shelfware. Many of you are asking: If these senior folks are getting paid the big bucks, and aren’t using the strategic plan for its intended purpose, why are they even employed at your organization? That’s a really good question. It’s because the people above them, including corporate boards, are as uninformed as they are.
Once your organization has a strategic plan and everyone knows their role in achieving the objectives, managers meet with each employee to jointly agree on individual objectives. The boss and each direct report meet weekly to discuss progress toward their measurable objectives. This is when the boss provides each direct report with meaningful feedback. They should also look for accomplishments that merit recognition and appreciation. “Jessica, you did a great job on the report. (recognition.) Thank you for all you do. (appreciation).”
This blog is not intended to give you all the details needed to make the above happen. All the details are in The No-Nonsense Manager’s Playbook: A Guide for Leaders Who Need Answers Now!
1 Peter Capelli, “Managing to Fail? Why New Leaders Need Training,” Wharton Executive Education, September 2024.
2 “People Managers Are the Key to Organizational Success...But They Could Use Some Help, New SHRM Research Finds,” Society for Human Resource Management, June 13, 2024.
3 “State of the Global Workplace 2024 Report: The Voice of the World’s Employees, Gallup Workplace, p. 3, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx?thank-you-report-form=1.
4 “What Is Employee Engagement, and How Do You Improve It?” Gallup Workplace, 2026.
5 “2024 Employee Engagement Strategies Checklist,” Gallup, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/388685/2024-guide-employee-engagement.aspx.
6 Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, “The Office of Strategic Management,” Harvard Business Review, October 2005.