Recently I went out to breakfast at the 122 Diner in Holden, Massachusetts about two miles from our house. Sunday morning, 9 AM packed house. Great food, great service, and plenty of employees.

Make that plenty of trained, motivated, and enthusiastic employees. As I sat there watching the eight "front of the house" employees expertly interact with guests, deliver each other’s food, pour coffee refills around the room, and grab booster seats for little ones, I was thinking to myself that the so-called ‘employee shortage’ wasn’t having much of an impact on this operation.

My immediate conclusion was that there must be good management or good ownership or both, because this small-town restaurant was cranking, and as long-time readers know, one of my favorite cliches is that it is hard to hide a good restaurant.

My thoughts shifted to ‘why?’ Why did this location NOT have an employee problem? And as I looked around and saw many of the employee faces that I’ve seen over the years, I realized that it had enough quality staff because the good ones…stayed. I also saw new faces and realized that the good employees probably referred their friends, and that the restaurant had a reputation in the town for…being a good place to work?

Los Angeles on Jan. 28, 2022.Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

It amazes me that this is even a discussion, since we all know why employees quit, don’t we?

Forget the human resource surveys and exit interviews, those are likely accurate, but dominated by very disgruntled or kinda-sorta-unsure vanilla responses. I’d also be less than honest with you if I didn’t admit there are times when I’ve wanted an employee to quit. Not all turnover is bad, although all turnover reflects a judgement error of some kind.

What you are about to read, doesn’t contradict the surveys or what you’ve observed with your own eyes or through your own experience, but it is maybe a little ‘between the lines’ insight.

From my time as a people manager, with accountability for literally tens of thousands of employees over the years and with the knowledge that thousands of employees have quit the business units I’ve supervised, I believe there is a much simpler explanation for why people quit a job.

You might think the answer I’m going to give is ‘money’ but it’s not. While money is obviously a factor in 99% of the decisions we make, and not limited to employment decisions, I don’t believe it is the primary reason people quit jobs.

It’s the manager. People quit managers more than they quit companies, but in all fairness, to most employees, their manager IS the company or at least the part of the company that impacts them the most.

My Uncle Joe, a man of wisdom, used to tell me when I was a kid ‘It is doubtful that an organization ever became disappointed in an employee before the employee became disappointed in the organization.” Replace the word ‘Manager’ for ‘Organization’ and you have it right.  When people become disappointed in their direct supervisor, they quit, or go over her/his head with other consequences.

Why are managers the reason that people quit? Well, the most obvious reason is that managing is not easy. In fact, managing is hard. Managers struggle to manage. The evidence includes the number of books on management at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. (If you go to Amazon and type ‘Management Books’ into the search box, it will show more than 100,000 titles.)

In my years of managing, and managing managers, and managing the managers of managers, as well as training managers, here is my version of the three things that managers struggle with the most.

Most managers, especially those promoted up through the ranks, have a high degree or expertise in a field or technical knowledge. That’s what gets them promoted.

Unfortunately, once they become part of management, that technical expertise is NOT what they are judged on, not what they earn their living by, and not the expectation of employees they supervise.

No, they are judged based on their ability to give direction. Many new managers believe that supervision is in addition to their ‘expert’ function, and it is just the opposite. Supervision is the primary, first, and top priority of a manager, and the technical part or the expert part is secondary. Many new managers fail to understand this and fail at managing. If you are a manager, your primary role is to manage others, not be the technical expert.

Most managers like a certain style of managing or use one style of managing. You hear terms like autocratic or participative, or employee-centric and other terms du jour for the latest fad.

The reality is all those styles work, but only for employees who respond well to those styles. From my restaurant background, new servers, those who have never waited on tables, need to be TOLD what to do I.e., suggest dessert, not participate in the discussion. Veteran servers, on the other hand, can likely decide what dessert to sell and when to sell it.

To use a directing style with the veteran servers will move them to move on because of ‘micro-managing’ and to use a participative style with new servers will move them to move on because they are overwhelmed. Failure to vary the leadership style based on the skill, ability of readiness of a follower for a specific task is a blank check for turnover.

I have been in several situations where the management or leadership was poor, and I came to the following conclusion. It wasn’t because the leaders didn’t care or didn’t try or were intrinsically bad.

Rather, it was because they were in over their heads and/or doing something for the first time. I believe that there is no difference in impact whether someone is in over their heads or doing something for the first time: it is not fun to be an employee in that environment. Why? Because in those situations, as an employee you see more than the leader and constantly and consistently wonder ‘why?’

My explanation for why this is true is that when you are in over your head or doing something for the first time, you are too worried about yourself: how you are doing or how you look, to worry about your employees. Even if employees don’t verbalize it, they know. They always know.

If you are a manager of people, consider the following to improve your team’s results.

“I am never too busy to talk with you,” is a great mantra for a leader to share with her or his staff. In homage to human resources research, the number one factor employees use to evaluate a boss is the answer to the question “Do you care about me?”

Care more to reduce turnover.

Treating all the same is fine when it comes to company policy, fairness, equity, and the law. But treating all employees the same when providing direction, ignores the facts that they come from different places with different experiences.

Vary your style based on who you are managing and the task they are performing. One size does not fit all in management. A new employee and a 20-year employee do not have the same skills, abilities, and readiness for all tasks.

Take the time to assess where each employee might be in relation to the assignment you are giving. Gray hair doesn’t automatically mean ‘expert’ and youth doesn’t automatically mean green behind the ears. Everyone teaches us how to supervise them, we just need to pay attention.

The Situational Leadership Model and Situational Leadership Training is an excellent source of information and skill development in this area.

There are only two ways to move out of an ‘in over your head’ situation or a time where you are doing it for ‘the first time.’ The first is to push through it, collect the scar tissue that comes with a rough experience and learn from it. The second is to get a mentor.

Mentors can diminish the gap between your personal experience and the experience you need to be effective. Mentors can not only be found in other areas of the organization or outside the organization, but sometimes they can be found among the employees supervised.

Being the boss does not come with a requirement to know all the answers. Being the boss comes with the requirement to make the right decision, regardless of where the insight came from.

So, I don’t know anything about the management or ownership of the 122 Diner, but I will tell you that in the words of Miranda Lambert, country music artist, ‘everyone dies famous in a small town’ and if the 122 Diner did not have good employees and good management it would be gone, just like the restaurant it replaced.

Good, and great managers, minimize turnover by:

1.      Caring about their employees and putting supervision first on the priority list.

2.      Varying their leadership style based on the employee’s skill, ability, or readiness.

3.      Focusing on making the right decision instead of being the smartest person in the room.

My guess is that they consistently do all three of these things at the 122 Diner.

They may not have zero turnover, but they have a great team to supervise, they have the employees they deserve.

In 1981, I wandered into a ballroom at UCLA and there were a couple of guys with flipcharts explaining something call Situational Leadership. I was entranced, quickly internalized the concepts and have been managing by the principles for more than forty years and sharing the concepts with the managers that I managed.

In 2021, I took the big step of becoming Certified as a Situational Leadership Trainer Partner and can provide this excellent program to you or your company. Contact me to learn more.

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