How to be the manager no one wants to leave

Because of the work of two men more than 10 years ago, we as a society are able to pinpoint the most decisive factor in employee retention. And surprisingly enough, it’s not pay. It’s not benefits, either, or the company work environment. It’s the boss.

In 1999, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, two researchers from The Gallup Organization, published the results of in-depth interviews with more than 80,000 managers in more than 400 companies. The book was titled, "First, Break All the Rules – What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently."

After all of those interviews in all of those companies, the two researchers boiled down their research to one often-quoted phrase, "People leave managers, not companies."

Beyond just finding the responsible party to point a disgruntled finger at, Buckingham and Coffman’s work can be used for good. CIO.com plucked out several simple practices from the book that can be applied to the type of IT manager that employees wouldn’t want to quit.

First: Show Up as a Leader

CIO.com says that nearly 20 percent of its IT leadership coaching clients struggle with the transition from individual contributor to leader.

“They understand that they are now responsible for their team's delivery of results, and that they now need to manage the team,” CIO.com reports. “Where they sometimes miss the boat is that they do not distinguish managing the work of the team from managing the team of people. As a result, they tend to focus on task management and don't invest enough time or attention on engaging with their staff on the other practices below.”

Whether new or middle managers are over-managing, micromanaging or still too hands-on, in more cases than not, they’re just too green. They haven’t cultivated the skills necessary to aggressively lead a team.

Second: Delegate to Develop Staff 

A large percentage of IT managers at all levels delegate far less than they can and should,” CIO.com explains. “The first most common reason is that they do not use delegation as a staff development tool. That is, rather than delegate stretch assignments and use their time to mentor staff through the assignment, they do the work themselves and wait to delegate when the staff member is fully able to perform the assignment with little or no supervision.”

Instead of keeping the challenging work for themselves, delegating it out can prove positive. Staff are able to gain a sense of importance when trusted with new and different assignments. Spending one’s time mentoring employees through these new tasks will also cultivate a team environment where everyone involved is attaining new skills.

Third: Create Conditions of Accountability

“Employees expect to be fairly and consistently held accountable for their performance,” CIO.com reports. “When managers behave inconsistently in this domain, and/or allow some team members to under perform at the expense of more successful team members, we further reduce our desirability as managers to work for.”

And according to CIO.com, establishing accountability can happen in three simple steps.

1. Communicate clear and credible expectations.

2. Create compelling consequences – both positive and negative.

3. Hold ongoing conversations grounded in facts and observable behavior. Telling someone they need to improve their attitude is open for interpretation, says CIO.com. Telling someone to curtail their negative commentary in meetings, on the other hand, is a demand that can be met.

CIO.com admitted that there “are certainly more practices in which we as leaders can and should engage in order to be among those managers for whom employees want to work. By starting with and making improvements in these first three, we are very likely to improve retention within our team.”