University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
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12

The Elements of Great Managing

Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter
Gallup Press, 2006
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

The Gallup Organization has studied employment and management issues for decades. Rodd Wagner and James Harter distill its findings into 12 pivotal concepts that managers can use to develop and keep great employees. These range from creating strong teams to managing them so that they support corporate goals. getAbstract lauds the way the authors illustrate their points with real-life examples. They show how and why managers implement each of the 12 factors, which are usefully broken down into business cases. The 12 principles are nicely interconnected. Each one explains a way to provide employees with direct management support. This means guaranteeing their loyalty to your firm by giving their jobs a context, providing a culture that supports their friendships, offering them clear career paths, and creating opportunities for them to grow and develop as people and employees. The authors explain why salary does matter, but also why it is not the most crucial aspect of employee management. They demonstrate how the worst managers view everything in financial terms, whereas the best managers give of themselves to support their people.

Summary

Prosper Through Your Employees

Yes, people come to work for a paycheck, but employees feel a big difference between putting in time going through the motions of the job, and being part of a high-performing team.

Now you can replicate the elements of a great work experience for your employees. After more than 10 million workplace interviews, Gallup found 12 concepts that great managers use to create quality employee experiences. These principles do not require rare talents or extreme performance. You simply have to apply them.

1. “Knowing What’s Expected”

Employees want to know what they are supposed to do to accomplish their assignments. A job description alone doesn’t ensure that an employee will perform well, and an employee can’t let the company down because his or her job description does not spell out necessary tasks. As a manager, coordinate with your staffers to make sure that you and they understand their jobs’ full implications, how their work connects to results and who to call when outside-the-norm events occur. Consistently doing a good job means performing well under varying, sometimes unpredictable conditions. Great managers enable...

About the Authors

Rodd Wagner is a Gallup Organization principal and an expert on high-performance management and the interplay between employee commitment and company performance. James K. Harter, Ph.D., a chief scientist at Gallup, focuses on its international workplace-management program. He has written or co-authored more than 1,000 research studies.

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