This blog post is highly valuable and you, my dear subscriber, are getting it for FREE because that’s how I roll. The information contained in this post is the result of the tireless work of a team of data-miners at the mother of all data-crunchers: Google. In 2009 statisticians within the company embarked on a mission to research what made certain Google bosses great. After a year of number crunching, analysis, and goodness knows how many $$, they came up with the “8 Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers.” Then, they decided to spend even more money to rank these 8 habits and, (insert drumroll here) here’s the results:
According to the “people analytics teams” (not just team my friends, but TEAMS) at Google, the key things that employees valued in their managers were:
- Even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings;
- Bosses who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions (not by dictating what to do);
- Managers who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.
Anyone else out there fascinated by the fact that it took a team of statisticians over a year to figure this out? Couldn’t they have just cracked open Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffmans’ book First Break All the Rules released, by the way, in 1999?
I found this a bit of a testament to the fact that really smart people can often waste a lot of time trying to overcomplicate very simple things. So, to boil it down one step further… to be a great manager, you need to…
- Meet with your staff regularly and ask them how they’re doing;
- Don’t jump into solve all their problems for them. Ask questions; and,
- Find out what they did on the weekend.
Happy leading!
