What is manager effectiveness?

Acquiring capable talent who are resilient and effective is crucial for a company’s growth and success. It not only helps an organisation become streamlined and optimised but also helps shape a sturdier and dedicated workforce. When your leadership is strong, there are less chances of drastic blunders or overlooked mistakes. This is where manager effectiveness comes into play.

Manager effectiveness refers to when the team, department, and unit managers and leaders effectively organise their employees and teams and encourage them to put in their best work and contributions. A major part of being able to do so is by having the skills to motivate and deal with different employees. Here, it is crucial to understand that simply setting rules and designating work time is not the crux of manager effectiveness. The idea is to move past this and use empathetic strategies to bring the best results.

It is easy to speak about manager effectiveness in simple terms; however, identifying if a manager is effective requires additional effort. Measuring the effectiveness of a manager, both qualitatively and quantitatively, requires logic and structure. This is where a manager effectiveness survey comes into play and serves the purpose superbly.

A manager effectiveness survey is a survey for employees where they can provide constructive and actionable feedback to their managers for future improvements. These manager feedback surveys are structured feedbacks that help a manager to learn what they are doing well and areas that require improvement. Even though a manager effectiveness survey is structured, it doesn’t need to have the same questions across all departments. Here are the most important questions that need to go on every managers evaluation form.

Seven questions that need to be on every managers evaluation form

Creating and nurturing strong and resilient leaders is essential to bring in productivity and problem-solving skills into the workplace and to decrease employee turnover. Companies need to be careful about how to evaluate managers. Let’s dive deeper into the most important questions on a manager feedback survey.

1. Your concerns, suggestions, and feedback require a good ear. Is your manager a good listener?

It’s important for employees to be able to fearlessly voice their concerns, suggestions, and feedback to their manager. If they don’t feel comfortable doing so and feel like their manager is not interested in listening to them, it’s a big fail on the part of the manager. Receiving such constructive criticism from bottom-up is crucial for conflict resolution and effective business operations.

2. Listening to your concerns, suggestions, and feedback is not the end of the line. Acting upon them is crucial as well. Does your manager act on the constructive criticism brought to their table?

The manager feedback surveys overlook if managers act upon the problems brought to them. Being a good listener is important, but taking significant action towards improvement is crucial as well. It’s important for employees to understand this second step and must be asked if their managers do the same or not.

3. The company’s sales target can be affected if the management isn’t clear on individual and team objectives. Does your manager communicate this to your team well?

Often, employees complete a task thinking they did their best but end up learning that they are too far from fulfilling the required objectives. One reason for this could be that the employee couldn’t interpret the objectives and the task properly.However, a major reason for this is also that managers fail to communicate objectives – both at an individual and team level – effectively. So, make sure to ask this question in your manager effectiveness survey and ensure that this issue is being taken care of.

4. Giving constructive feedback to your juniors is an important part of being a good and effective manager. Does your manager regularly and adequately provide you with feedback on your work and performance?

An important part of anyone’s role in the workplace is to learn and nurture their concepts for good career growth. One cannot do so if they do not receive feedback and constructive criticism on their work. To motivate their team and help them learn new things, an effective manager always makes sure to give their employees feedback in an adequate manner regularly.

5. An important quality in a strong and effective manager is empathy. Is your manager flexible and adaptable to your needs or personal problems?

A manager effectiveness survey doesn’t need to only evaluate how well a manager is performing in terms of business operations. Make sure to ask employees if their manager has an empathetic streak and is flexible and adaptable about changing deadlines, reducing or increasing workload, providing flexible work policies, etc.

6. Doing isolated departmental work isn’t what drives a business forward. Do you think your manager has a strong grasp about the overall business goals, mission, and vision of the company?

Effective managers need to recognise the good work and contributions of other departments as well as work in collaboration with them. The manager survey for employees should ask if they think their manager has a solid overall grasp about what the business goals are, what the company is trying to achieve, and what values they are basing their work on.

7. This question requires two answers. What would you recommend your manager change about their management approach and what would you recommend they continue doing?

It’s important to ask employees questions that are beyond the standard “yes” or “no” answers. This question helps employees explain in a very descriptive manner what they would like to be changed and what they would like to be continued. This also helps managers identify their strength and weakness and make changes to their management style accordingly. It’s also a good idea to encourage employees to explain what they would like their managers to do to make their work more significant and meaningful.

Benefits of manager effectiveness surveys

Here’s a quick yet detailed understanding of the different benefits of properly conducting manager effectiveness surveys in any organisation.

Identifying the right areas of development

Good managers must improve themselves too. A well-structured and properly answered manager survey for employees can help managers identify the exact areas where they need to focus their efforts on. This way, a manager wouldn’t keep trying to learn how to be a good listener when, in fact, they need to get better at problem-solving and design thinking.

Swift organisational growth

Helping good leaders and managers improve and grow is a great way to kickstart a swift organisational growth. When managers are at the helm of business projects and operations, they need to be able to perform as well as encourage and bring superior results. By receiving and working on actionable and constructive feedback and suggestions, a manager effectiveness survey can help build an environment of growth.

Improve employee satisfaction

A big reason for demotivated employees is a poor managerial environment. Uninspired leadership doesn’t help employees bring forward their best work or even let them feel encouraged about exceeding expectations and reaching for more. When managers learn to improve their work and learn something new, this positive outlook trickles down into the employees and helps them feel more satisfied with their work as well.

Reduce employee turnover

A direct result of increased employee satisfaction is reduced employee turnover. When employees feel encouraged and motivated by their managers to do productive work and make positive changes, they begin to find fewer reasons to leave the company. Employees are satisfied in the environment where they are learning and growing and wish to continue with the same company for continued exposure and nurturing.

Pro tip: An important part of reducing turnover and increasing employee satisfaction is also attributed to effective talent management. This is made easy if you take care of employee potential using People Analytics Tools such as Talenx.io.

Promotes open and transparent communication

A big part of stress and conflict in the workplace is poor communication. Managers might feel that their team is unqualified or stressed for no reason, while employees might feel that their manager is not a good leader to carry forward projects. This poor communication leads to numerous conflicts in the workplace which, when left unattended, can be very difficult to resolve. A manager effectiveness survey can help promote open and transparent communication that eliminates or reduces conflicts.

Conclusion

Great and effective managers aren’t born miraculously. They need to be nurtured and taught how to make improvements. Simultaneously, they also require recognition and appreciation for everything that they’ve been doing well. Using talent management tools such as Talenx.io as well as conducting regular and well-structured manager effectiveness surveys is key to pushing your business in the right direction and engaging your employees in the best way possible.