People Leave Managers

By Inspiware Staff Writer

Boston, MA | Updated 30 Mar, 2021

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“People leave managers, not companies”
― Marcus Buckingham

Marcus Buckingham is right. A toxic manager can lead to a lot of brain drain. If great people are leaving your company and the common link is the same manager, you have to get rid of him/her (mostly him) immediately.

People leave managers, particularly the toxic ones:

Examples galore where good cultures fall prey to the allure of a toxic manager.

Take Steven, a divisional CIO (Chief Information Officer) at a large financial services firm. After a review, he found one of the application development teams is having performance and delivery issues. The current manager, Alberto, is a friendly, avuncular figure, trying hard to manage a tough situation. Steven’s reaction was that the Alberto is soft and hence he needed a taskmaster to remedy the situation.

Steven hired Joe to lead the team. Joe has a reputation as a rough and tumbles guy who takes no prisoners. Joe took charge and without understanding set artificial deadlines, bullied them into working long hours – including weekends, and did not allow any bad news to seep outside the group.

With all the pressure for a few quarters, the performance improved and the projects met the deadlines. However, underneath the façade frustration and despair were brewing and it was only a matter of time before proverbial shit hit the roof.

First, the lead architect quit. A great full stack developer moved to a different division.

The morale plummeted and the halo of the first few quarters of delivery and quality went out the door.

After about 12 months, with 30% attrition from the group and severe quality issues, Steven, the CIO woke up and realized his mistake. After an extensive review, and after a realization that people leave managers, Joe was let go.

However, the damage Joe caused was not a fleeting issue but a long-term festering problem. Bringing the team back from such low morale and lack of motivation is almost an impossible task.

Not only the incident caused attrition in the specific group, but the overall morale of the IT department also suffered a great deal. The employee referrals dropped, and the acceptance rate of offers made to top talent diminished as well.

Steven has a big task in front of him. One that only can heal with time and return to the original culture.

As you can see, a bad manager can ruin more than his/her team. When hiring mistakes occur, leaders who notice the toxicity must get rid of the bad managers immediately.

Otherwise, not only will your attrition rate increase, but it will sully the corporate reputation, and the company culture will change for the worse.

The essence of corporate leadership is weeding out the bad seeds. When people leave managers, do you act?

Agree? Please share your thoughts.