People don’t leave companies. They leave leaders!

October 7, 2016

Why is that?

Let’s put it this way: why do they want to leave?

Here are some suggested answers: they are “fed-up”; bored; unsatisfied; looking for more challenges; tired; uncomfortable; have “too much workload”.

But why?

Breaking news: because of their managers a.k.a ‘leaders’.

The reasons vary, depending on the leadership style. Although each one of them comes with some advantages, I will share examples when they are at their worst. And unfortunately, these negative outcomes are not rare: 68% of employees are not satisfied with their jobs worldwide. Guess what is the number one reason which causes this?

Guess what is the number one reason that causes this? Leadership style.

Laissez-faire: this type of leadership is the killer. Leaders who follow this approach have no supervision of their employees. In this case, no feedback is provided neither to encourage and congratulate nor to improve.

A hypothetical scenario: an employee, performing at an A-level, who exceeds the expectations, yet receives no acknowledgement. “What am I doing in this company?” – this is what this person would start asking if this continues systematically.

Careless: “What about my manager? Nothing much, actually, s/he doesn’t really care about my work anyway.” A manager with this attitude is expensive since most of the time you can hear them saying something similar to this: “Employees can handle this themselves.”

Autocratic: this is the talents killer. This is a style of leadership where leaders make decisions based on their own point of you, without involving their colleagues into decision-making processes.

“I’m the leader I take the decision, I’m always right! No one has to challenge my decisions!” – this statement describes perfectly the attitude of such manager. Sadly, the autocratic management style is the most widespread globally, while employees would prefer a democratic approach where they are given freedom for their own actions.

Otherwise, employees, again, might start wondering if they are staying in the right company.

Lazy: this is a manager who basically does not do his job right. Typically, you need to knock at the door (sometimes literally) 10 times to remind him or her to put their signature on a document that was supposed to be signed 2 weeks ago.

This attitude also causes lots of problems that were absolutely foreseen in advance and were preventable. But due to inaction, nothing has been done to prevent them from happening. Or worse – they would prefer to keep the status quo. “Why to fix something that already works?”

The moral of the story:

Lazy managers are the innovation killers.

Greedy: these managers are expected to say one of those lines: “don’t worry, I am going to present this. Thanks a lot for all your work”, “people need to know that I’m the leader of the project, I’ve have done/created/managed/established… etc. this project”

Employee’s thoughts: “Oh, for God’s sake. That was me who provided him/her with the feedback/presentation/support.” “Why didn’t s/he at least mention my name?” or “Couldn’t my leader at least congratulate/motivate/encourage me to go for more!” “I’ll leave this company for him/her to enjoy it.”

So yes:

people don’t leave companies.
They leave leaders!

But luckily, it is not that that hard to fix. To get employees back on the right track, just follow these steps:

Motivate them, direct their steps, cheer their successes with them and help them improve their skills and competencies by giving them more and more adequate challenges. If you as a manager enable them to be more creative by allowing them to stick to their devices. If you do it right, then you will make them think: “oh, my manager always stretches my creativity” “s/he gave me a GO to implement this idea” or “My manager encourages me to always think out of the box.” or “My project leader actually trusts me!”

So, managers – the corporate leaders – dear colleagues, keep your talents by watching out who you are.