Our recent work on manager effectiveness – where we did a large quantitative survey about manager skills, attributes, attitudes and activities — found robust correlations between how managers are rated by their direct reports and how they’re rated by the company.   In other words, most of the time, reps and the company will rate a given manager the same way:  both good, or both bad.

However, the correlations aren’t perfect.  Sometimes, there is a significant disconnect between how what the rep says and what the company says. We’ve started to generate a picture of where these disconnects come from.

First, there are reps ‘incorrectly’ assessing the manager, which comes in two forms:

1)   Rep performance issues:  Reps who have performance issues can resent the manager for holding them back.  Interestingly, for companies we have been tracking for a while, this effect tends to go away as the rep realizes the manager is helping them perform better. These managers typically need some appreciation for the hard job they’ve been asked to do.

2)   Long-beloved managers: There are well-loved managers who have been around a long time.  Reps love them, but the company can often more clearly see the skills they lack.  While they might not always have the competencies to progress to the next level or be the highest achievers, they do a lot for the organization and the company should recognize the loyalty that these managers engender in reps.

More problematically, there are cases when the organization ‘incorrectly’ assesses the manager, again in two forms:   Read More »