“Leaders who win the respect of others are the ones who deliver more than they promise—not the ones who promise more than they can deliver.” – Mark A. Clements

This week, the Weblog contains two parts.

The second part is a link to a story from Forbes about bartaco. The operations leader of that company is Anthony Valetta, formerly a Board Member for an organization I led, and previously involved in operations for Del Frisco Double Eagle Steakhouse in the Boston area. We did some really cool events together over the years.

The story linked is about how a bartaco restaurant in Atlanta survived the pandemic and worth a read because it is a great example of the topic covered in the first part of the Weblog.

The first part is a 'rebuttal' of sorts to the Managers Get the Employees They Deserve blog that appeared a short while ago.

That particular offering had more responses than any of the other blogs to date. It really resonated with readers in several different ways.

Perhaps in the middle of the Great Resignation, people who haven't been treated right were motivated to agree with me. Plus, managers or leaders with a track record of retaining employees intuitively agreed with the concepts.

One reader, Nick Mirick, not only read the blog, but took the time to send a detailed response that variously agreed and disagreed with the concepts outlined.

Overall, his take supported the premise with exceptions. Even if Managers don't always get the employees they deserve because of factors beyond their control, Organizations always get the employees they deserve. This is an important twist to the message, one worth sharing.

I am familiar with Nick's writing skill, superior to my own, as you will see.

Since the original blog was so well received, I asked Nick’s permission to incorporate his thoughts into this edition.

Here’s Nick:

Ed, I would offer a slight counter to your blog post that managers get the employees they deserve, I believe quoting you, 'feedback is a gift'.

Management increases or decreases organizational margin for error, but it cannot overcome fundamental issues around:

At some point any manager is going to feel the organizational deficiency in those areas and it is contagious.

My experiential metric is that a ‘replacement’ level manager (apologies for the baseball/Sabermetric framing) determines outcome, retention, and growth of each employee under them, so long as the organization is +/-5% of market standard in each of those areas.

“Replacement level” here has a similar meaning to baseball: what is the average manager you could hire in today?

50% of managers will be better, and 50% worse.

Worth calling out, this should be measured across companies, and not just as a comparison within a single company.

A company uniformly terrible or exceptional at hiring and training managers will experience different mileage with a “replacement level” manager.

A good manager increases the margin for error the company has with aligning to the greater market on say, compensation, but a good manager--even a great manager--cannot overcome a company underpaying market compensation rates by 15% or 20%.

Conversely, a bad manager can reduce that margin, and potentially lead an employee to leave for no compensation increase, or even a slight dip in compensation or opportunity.

Organizations place retention responsibilities on their line managers at their peril--unless they give individual managers utter control over comp and career pathing.

Which they do not.

Companies that treat managers as the primary, or worse, sole, responsible party for retention nearly always have retention problems--and they have a neat, readily available scapegoat for their turnover problem.

It absolves them of the responsibility of self-reflection or change.

Pew Research just released results from a recent study (link to Forbes article) on why people leave, asking respondents to provide a major and a minor reason for leaving their role.

Compensation and growth path are company driven, with individual and manager level execution components. "Feeling Respected" is a mix of manager and company. But how does that break out?

Compensation-wise, the organization controls the game and much of the allocation. This includes everything from pure pay, to benefits, long term benefits and retirement contributions. The manager likely controls a degree of allotment and advocating for individuals or teams, but that is it.

Career Pathing/Growth has a similar breakdown. The organization must know what their needs are, metrics to measure individuals, goals and milestones to demarcate outcomes.

Managers need to understand those organizational goals and benchmarks, as well as advocating for individuals and doing direct mentorship and coaching to help and push people to achieve their goals.

Providing managers with training around people management, and about identifying and mentoring high ceiling individuals, is a market differentiator that drives retention.

Respect is the hardest to define, but the most impactful and most likely to smooth over other difficulties.

Respect will mean different things to different people--and different things to the same person at different stages of their life.

30-year-old Nick wanted very different things than 25-year-old Nick, than 40-year-old Nick. I am in no way unique in that.

I typically think of respect as a constantly-in-flux mix of pure compensation, title, spotlight, investment (via training or coaching), opportunity and life/work flexibility.

The organization needs to understand and appreciate the value each role and person brings to the company and provide avenues to express and capture that respect.

The manager must know what the primary respect motivator is for each person on their team--and they need to know it now. Today. Not 3 weeks ago. Certainly not 6 months ago.  Right now.

We all know people who have a manager in their past who progressed beyond being a manager and became a mentor. I am lucky enough to have one and learned people management from her. It is worth examining what allowed them to transcend being a manager and become a mentor.

Sometimes it is a like skill set or being cut from the same cloth or a similar background, challenge or upbringing. But at its core, it is about respect and empathy.

The mentor's respect, and their ability to demonstrate their respect, for the mentee is foundational. Critically, the reverse is also required: the mentee's ability to recognize, value and demonstrate their respect for the mentor.

Mutual respect, at the manager/managed individual level, pays massive organizational dividends.

The manager controls their teams' access to, and well-timed hip-bumps towards, opportunities that exist inside the organization. They control the messaging and the application of respect--of lifting up and highlighting their people and their skills. They are a conduit.

The manager must manage up, to and within, the broad organization, and down to each individual, balancing day-to-day touches, advocacy and framing.

But we also need to accept that managers—even good ones—can be stymied by an organization that does not align on the value, importance or contribution of their teams.

If managers are the conduit of the organization, if what the organization is putting in the funnel is a lack of respect, comp and opportunity for the team, the manager will get the turnover the organization deserves.

Conversely, if the organization is feeding positive comp, respect and opportunity into the conduit and the manager is withholding one or all from their team, that manager will get the turnover they deserve.

In practice, nothing is so clean. Navigating, understanding and communicating about the reality of the situation is important for every manager in an organization—and the importance grows as individual gain seniority. The interplay between manager and organization is the biggest driver for retention, training, and skill—and those two components have separate and distinct ownership components that critically intertwine.

Really enjoyed the blog post!

⁦‪@mitsmr⁩

The feeling of being respected at work is 17.9 times more powerful a predictor of culture score than the typical topic: mitsmr.com/3hDnJEU ⁦‪@CultureXInsight⁩ pic.twitter.com/JL8XkUcpby

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