If you “google” the question — why employees leave their jobs — there are hundreds of thousands of google results.  If you read many of the entries, the reasons start with the word “Management (or Bosses)…”.  “Management didn’t appreciate me; Bosses overworked me; Management didn’t promote me; Bosses didn’t understand me”… and on and on.  The old saying that “people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their Managers/Bosses” couldn’t be more true.  And as the recession starts to be yesterday’s news, many of your Top Performers are quitting their jobs (and their Managers) for new (and perceived to be better) opportunities.

How well do you know your employees and how well do you manage your employees based on what you know?

“By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” — Robert Frost

The eloquent American poet’s words have a ring of truth to them — but they provide only one view of the boss’s job.  There are perspectives aplenty, and one in particular does not rely on the chief spending 12 or more hours every day toiling at work.  It is this: The boss’s goal instead is to develop employees so that everyone participates in a productive, enjoyable, and fulfilling workplace.

Let’s pay a visit to an imaginary workplace.  We will call it The Nirvana Company. Imagine a boss at Nirvana focusing energy and expertise on the quality of his or her relationships with employees.  This boss would know, for example, whether an employee’s decision-making style matched her own fast-paced method, or whether the worker preferred to take some time to ponder situations before making decisions.  The boss would learn how best to manage that worker to get his very best decisions and the highest productivity.  There’s more — the boss would do this for every employee in the organization.

Does this scenario seem too good to be true?  It doesn’t have to be.  In fact, we offer an assessment that not only helps the boss work on relationships — it helps employees do the same thing.

Workplaces do exist in which supervisors and their direct reports know each other’s work styles and use that knowledge to their own and the organization’s advantage.  And studies show that such managers and employees are highly productive and engaged.  The reverse is also true: Managers who are out of step with employees often cause low productivity, low morale and high turnover. In fact, more people leave bosses than they do jobs.

The assessment that addresses this issue is the Profiles Managerial Fit™ (PMF), and it combines insight into the characteristics that affect the boss-employee relationship with information on how unique individuals can best work together.  The strength of Profiles Managerial Fit lies in two key areas: what it measures and what it provides as a result of its measurements.  First, the measurements: Profiles Managerial Fit examines seven important characteristics that define the relationship between an employee and the manager: self-assurance, self-reliance, conformity, optimism, decisiveness, objectivity and approach to learning.  Once these are measured and analyzed for both boss and worker, the manager receives a report.

The manager’s report provides a:

• Verbal summary of the manager’s and employee’s styles.
• Graphic summary showing the match between the two regarding the seven characteristics.
• “Working Together” section which provides a:
  • detailed description of the differences between the two on each characteristic.
  • “best practice” working style for both the manager and the employee.

The results?  With the use of the PMF, managers are now able to:

• Communicate better.
• Spot conflicts before they occur.
• Successfully resolve problems that pop up.

This assessment is neither magic nor a fairy tale — nor does it support the view of Robert Frost expressed above.  It does require hard work and a commitment to rely more on facts than assumptions.  But its strength is in its personalization of management strategy.  The one-size-fits-all approach to management is out the window.

Know and manage your employees better with the Profiles Managerial Fit assessment.

(the article above is excerpted from the Profiles Advantage Newsletter dated November, 2008, but updated to reflect current product information)