WHAT GOOD MANAGEMENT DOES

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Setting Clear Goals

 

One of the most important managerial behaviours is the setting of clear goals.  People make more progress when managers clarify where the work is heading and why it matters.  Studies show that teams that made greater progress with work projects had more instances where the project goals and the team members’ individual work goals were clear, or were changed carefully, and where people knew why their work mattered to the team, the organisation, and the organisation’s customers.  

 

By contrast, teams that made less progress reported more events that muddied, confused, or haphazardly changed the goals.  Sometimes those teams would be given a goal by management, only to be assigned several other tasks that conflicted with that goal.  Often, those teams had a sense of futility about their work, because of uncertainty about how or even whether their efforts would make a difference.

 

Research shows that in successful projects, the managers communicated in detail to clarify the project goals, specify their needs, and explain to everyone involved why the project was important.  Although there were sometimes many problems to overcome, there was no ambiguity about the goal.

 

Managing with a human touch

 

Interpersonal managerial events, in which people are treated decently as human beings, have a major impact on performance.  When a high-level executive delivers bottled water and pizza to people working after hours, not only does the event cause happy surprise, it also sends a positive signal to the employees.  This seemingly trivial event causes people to perceive their work and themselves as important and valued, which evokes additional positive emotions.  

 

Person-to-person encounters where, for example, a senior manager praises a subordinate, works collaboratively with a subordinate as a peer, makes things more fun and relaxing, or provides emotional support, have a direct positive impact on people’s perceptions, emotions, and motivations.

 

Research shows that similar positive emotions arise when other colleagues and teams offer to pitch in.  Team-working, combined with the support of senior management, is a powerful driver for improving motivation and performance.

 

Enabling progress

 

When they were most happy, had the most positive perceptions of the workplace, and were most intrinsically motivated, the single most important differentiator for people was a sense of being able to make progress in their work.  Achieving a goal, accomplishing a task, or solving a problem often evoked great pleasure and sometimes elation.  Even making progress toward such goals could elicit the same reactions.

 

Managerial actions facilitating or impeding progress may be 'super' powerful because they have multiple direct and indirect effects on performance.  The direct effects are fairly obvious.  For example, when goals are not articulated clearly, work proceeds in wrong directions and performance suffers.  Less directly, the frustration of wasting time sours 'inner work life', leading to lower motivation.  People facing seemingly random choices will be less inspired to act on any of them.  

 

When a manager’s actions impede progress, that behaviour sends a strong signal.  People trying to make sense of why senior managers would not do more to facilitate progress draw their own conclusions, perhaps that their work is unimportant or that their bosses are wilfully undermining them, or are incompetent.

 

Supportive Approach

 

It is managers providing direct help where needed (versus hindrance), providing adequate resources and time (versus inadequate resources or unnecessary time pressure), and reacting to successes and failures with a positive learning orientation (versus a purely evaluative orientation).  Supportive behaviours engender good emotions, perceptions, and enable employees to make progress in their work.  

Praise without real work progress, or at least toward progress, has little positive impact on people’s inner work lives and can even arouse cynicism.  Good work progress without any recognition - or, worse, with criticism about trivial issues - can engender anger and sadness, leading to a serious weakening in performance.

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