How bad managers lose good staff

Working under a bad manager is the most popular reason people walk away from a job, research shows.

Corporate education adviser Dr Lindsay Ryan says up to 35 per cent of people cite poor management as the reason they move to another job.

“There is an old saying that people don’t leave good organisations; they leave bad managers and time and time again you will find that’s actually the case,” he says.

But bad managers are not necessarily the workplace terrors as depicted in the latest movie Horrible Bosses. Dr Ryan says they’re more likely bad managers because they’ve had little or no training on how to manage.

“I’ve seen time and again organisations promote people because they are the best sales people the organisation has, so they say: `We should promote them because we’ll lose them if we don’t promote them’.

“So they promote them to a manager’s role but they’ve never been trained or developed or had a mentor to groom them for that role.

“So then they flounder in that role and the organisation also loses its momentum as far as sales are concerned, so it’s a bit of a lose-lose all round.”

Dr Ryan, who is based in Adelaide, says bad managers are those who do not listen, try to micro-manage their staff and fail to support them.

“It’s the soft skills that are important: listening skills and keeping the communication flowing with employees so they know what’s exspected (sic) of them,” he says.

The Australian Institute of Management’s Queensland chief executive Vivienne Anthon says there are plenty of warning signs that employers should look out for.

“It can be that there is a high turnover. . . it can be that the results in the area just aren’t there even though there are many good people in the area,” she says.

She agrees with Ryan in that employers tend to promote people to management without the proper training.

“A lot of people don’t actually start out in life wanting to be a manager,” Ms Anthon says.