Drumbeat

🚀 A Call to Support Our Managers 🚀 In a world where over 50% of managers are so swamped with tasks that they struggle to connect with their teams, a question emerges: How well are we supporting the leaders meant to inspire and guide us? 💡 Reflecting on insights from multiple recent reports (link below), the disparity is striking. Despite the critical role of middle managers in driving engagement and business outcomes, only 20% feel their organizations fully empower them to be effective leaders. 🔍 The transition from high-performing individual contributors to managers often comes with a steep learning curve—underscored by a notable statistic: 74% of managers report a lack of ongoing training post-promotion, leaving many to navigate their roles without a compass. 🌟 New Managers Alert: Over 40% of managers with less than two years of experience are on the lookout for new opportunities. This trend is more than a wake-up call; it's a beacon for change. ✨ We Must Ask Ourselves: • How are we nurturing our managers’ growth? • What can we do to bridge the gap between skill and expectation? • In what ways can we foster a culture that doesn't just promote talent but sustains and enriches it? 🌊 Let's champion a future where every manager is equipped, empowered, and inspired. Together, we can turn the tide. 🌊

🚨 Managers spend, on average, over 4 hours a week managing conflict. 🚨 The most common causes of conflict: 1) poor communication, 2) unclear roles, 3) heavy workloads, and 4) personality clashes. When dealt with effectively, conflict can lead to greater innovation, trust, and collaboration among teams. When dealt with ineffectively, conflict can result in toxic work environments leading to anxiety, burnout, and turnover. In our latest blog post, we share four actionable strategies every manager can implement to turn potential discord into opportunities for growth or, in some cases, even mitigate the risk of conflict before it arises. https://lnkd.in/gb7K3bVi

🌎 People who choose to work at nonprofits, dedicated to making a difference in the world, often struggle the most with stressful work environments. 🌎 "While burnout affects workers in all sectors around the world, nonprofit organizations appear to be among those particularly vulnerable to it." 🛠 There are several key levers that leaders can pull to mitigate burnout within their organization at a systematic level. 🛠 First, leaders need to take care of themselves. When a leader manages their own stress and well-being, they are able to work and lead more effectively. "Nonprofit leaders indicated some resistance to taking care of their own needs when others are 'worse off' or need more assistance than they do. However, a McKinsey survey on employee experience found that those who engaged in self-care were able to improve their work effectiveness by 21 percent and their well-being by 45 percent." Beyond that, McKinsey promotes three primary strategies for Nonprofit leaders: 1️⃣ Role modeling a supportive environment and sustainable models. 2️⃣ Building organizational awareness and incentivizing employee well-being. 3️⃣ Making operational changes and championing behavioral norms. See below for one of Drumbeat's most effective "action prompts" for Nonprofit leaders and managers to mitigate burnout on their teams and improve the work experience for their employees.

Millennial managers need help. ↗ Millennials make up the biggest share of the workforce. 👩💼 More and more millennials haved moved into management roles. 🚫 At least 40% to over 50% of millennial managers are experiencing burnout. "One of the major drivers behind millennial unhappiness at work is the fact that millennials make up a large portion of the manager level in many organizations. Managers are stuck in a particularly difficult place right now.” - Jen Fisher 🦋 Many of these managers are being set up for failure. Over 80% of millennial managers want more training in people management and over 70% want more training on how to manage hybrid and remote teams. The alternative to training and ongoing support is "winging it." This is bad news for organizations looking to keep their top performers. Managers experiencing all three aspects of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and a lack of professional efficacy) are 5x more likely to leave compared to a manager who isn't experiencing burnout symptoms. Fortunately, there are lots of proven approaches to mitigate burnout in managers that don't take much time or cost much money. Talk about a good ROI.

Why is there such a big gap between what leaders know they should do and what they actually do? The "knowing-doing gap" concept, pioneered by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, was resurfaced in Deloitte's 2024 Global Human Capital Trends Research. Though the majority of respondents (76%) recognize the importance of "Human Sustainability" (defined in comments), less than half (47%) of organizations are doing anything about it, and only 10% are doing great things to address it. Most leaders know that investing in people development and improved work culture leads to improved business outcomes (up to 21x). Yet few take action. Today, "only 43% of workers say their organizations have left them better off than when they started." Is 2024 the year we finally start to see a reduction in the knowing-doing gap when it comes to putting people on par with profits? Deloitte's research suggests "the major challenge to progress on human sustainability efforts is internal constraints" with few organizations having sufficient resources. We believe this is a challenge that can be solved.

Manager training, even if effective, isn't enough. Leaders need to remove organizational barriers that impact manager effectiveness and well-being. In large part due to organizational barriers (e.g. restrictive policies, lack of role clarity, overhwlming workloads, insufficient support), even the most well-intentioned managers (and their teams) are set up for failure. It's in the data: 🚨 54% of managers check in with employees about how they’re doing. 🚨 48% ensure that people’s workloads are reasonable. 🚨 47% make sure employees take breaks during the day. 🚨 38% encourage employees to use their company’s well-being benefits. 🚨 37% make sure employees use their paid time-off/take time off. 🚨 35% are open about their own well-being with their staff. 🚨 30% model healthy behaviors. 🚨 26% lead team well-being activities or challenges.

Research suggests that most learning and development programs drive zero lasting impact (McKinsey, HBR). This is a great article by Heidi Grant and Tal Goldhamer on what gets in the way of effective and engaging learning and development programs. They recommend two primary strategies that can be used to "provide employees with learning content that’s relevant, curated, and findable:" ✅ Understand why learning programs gets unwieldy: - Only include the things that matter - Personalize the content and support - Keep things focused (less is more) - Address real pain points - Focus on the actual customer ✅ Use impact as your gudie to development: - What is the evidence that this content has impact? - Does this directly address the problem? - Is this what the employees want? Effective leadership programs need to be synthesized into what matters, personalized to each employee, and backed by high-efficacy studies.

We're curious... what are your thoughts on AI-powered leadership coaching? https://lnkd.in/gD8Gpb5C

Clayton M. Christensen, author of 'How Will You Measure Your Life' and 'The Innovators Dilemma,' argued that being a manager is the most noble perfection, if practiced well. "No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team." The more we work with leaders and managers, the more we believe it. Research consistently shows the outsized impact that managers have on the well-being and success of the people on their team. Being a great manager is hard, but it's worth the effort to know you are making a difference. That's why we ask every manager in their first coaching session: "If this program was a resounding success, in six months: What’s the biggest change you would see in yourself as a manager? What would be different in your team? What would your team members say about you?" Here's to the managers that work tirelessly to serve their teams.

At the end of 2023, one of our founding coaches expressed an interest in working more in the nonprofit sector. We quickly put together a focus group with NFP leaders to better understand what they needed, budget constraints, and other solutions they've considered to support leader development within their organizations. It quickly became clear that help was needed. We moved quickly and have our first two NFP cohorts launching in the next few weeks with 10+ amazing managers (one with EDs and senior leadership & another with more junior leaders, moving into bigger management positions). **We have a couple more slots left for both cohorts & would be happy to schedule a call/demo if any interested NFP orgs in our network. To make our programs truly accessible in this space, we are offering a steep discount.**