Today is National Bosses Day — another contrived holiday where employees feign their dedication and appreciation to their supervisor. I really think a National Employees Day is more merited, but I digress.
Yesterday, a webinar poll asked: “What is your most pressing leadership challenge?” and half of respondents answered “Employee engagement and wellbeing.” Addressing that starts with the boss, as proven by Gallup’s research, which concluded that “70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager, and frontline managers in particular are the most crucial level when it comes to engaging an organization’s employees.”
This was on my mind when I read a social media post: “When a leader doesn’t know how to lead, they micro-manage.” Couple that with findings that most managers don’t feel prepared to do their job and with Gallup’s research, you can see why problems arise.
If senior leadership truly wants to do something special for National Bosses Day, provide supervision training for the frontline managers. It’s an investment that leverages itself over and over and provides something actually worth celebrating.
