People leave leaders

“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.” ~ Charles M. Schwab

We often conduct narrative based culture audits in organisations, and more often than not, one of the key patterns we find is negativity around leaders who don’t acknowledge the effort of their employees.

In South Africa, where skills shortages and high staff turnover create headaches for many organisations, I believe that leaders no longer have the luxury of not employing emotional intelligence.  This is especially true when it comes to middle managers and supervisors who deal directly with employees.

It often happens that these are technically skilled resources who have been ‘promoted’ into management positions due to technical excellence.  Unfortunately leadership development programmes often focus on senior leadership, with a consequence that supervisors and middle managers are seldom equipped with the necessary skills to manage or lead others.

Another truism comes to mind that organisations may want to pay more attention to if they want to retain talented staff …

“People leave managers, not organisations”