3 Practical Ways to Retain Your Managers – Even When Things Are Really Tough

Ever wonder why your managers keep leaving despite all the effort you put into creating a thriving environment? It's a tough pill to swallow, especially after you've invested so much time and energy into attracting top talent. When managers leave, it's not just disruptive; it's a hit to your leadership confidence and to the bottom line of the business. This turnover reduction challenge is a critical aspect of overall employee retention and talent management.

The reality is that the leadership climate has never been tougher with more VUCA than you can shake a stick at, and new challenges coming along on top of already new challenges. Job stress and workplace burnout are at all-time highs, making effective manager retention strategies more important than ever. A recent Deloitte survey showed that 53% of employees are looking for a new role that is going to be more healthy in terms of their wellbeing, and 70% of C-level leaders reported they might resign for a role that is less stressful. These are not numbers you can afford to ignore.

What could you do differently that will overcome this to keep your best managers in the team? Let's break it down.

Understanding Who Actually Leaves

Before getting into the practical steps, it is worth being clear about something that surprises many leaders. The managers most affected by burnout and overload are not the ones who were struggling. They are your highest performing, most committed, most engaged people. Those who leave are those who lost faith and belief that things were going to get better, so they started looking somewhere else.

The second thing worth understanding is that many organisations are actually offering good things in terms of pay, conditions and support, but they have not communicated or shared those things in a way that lands with their managers. So people leave for an organisation that has, even if that organisation is not objectively better. Poor communication between employees and their leadership is the principal cause for employees becoming disengaged and leaving. This means a significant part of your retention challenge is a perception problem, not just a substance problem.

1. Build Trust

Trust is the bedrock of a high-performing team, and it starts with you. When managing managers, your influence extends far beyond direct interactions. Research from Gallup shows that leaders account for up to 70% of the variance in employee engagement, and trust plays a crucial part in that. Your actions set the tone for the entire management layer beneath you, impacting overall organisational culture.

Without trust, collaboration, innovation, and morale crumble. In our High-Performance Leader programme, we discuss and adopt the SERVICE model, which provides a robust framework for building and maintaining trust with your team. This model encompasses Safety, Empathy, Respect, Visibility, Integrity, Clarity, and Equity, and helps leaders tailor their approach to performance management.

This highlights how reducing work-related stress and feeling stressed at work can be achieved through a culture of trust. It also reinforces why trust is not a soft, optional extra. It is a commercial lever.

2. Create Connection

Start with Onboarding

Connection, particularly through effective onboarding and ongoing support, is crucial. Many managers leave within their first 90 days due to inadequate onboarding from their leader, creating an even bigger headache and commercial impact for everyone. They are simply expected to get in and do the job, often a job they have not been prepared for. For new managers, this phase is even more critical as they transition into roles that require not just managing tasks but leading people.

Build a Support Network

Managers often feel isolated, bearing the brunt of pressures from both above and below. Helping them create a strong support network is crucial. Encourage peer connections and mentorship within your team that go beyond tasks. Regular check-ins, both one-on-one and in group settings, can build a sense of community, which in turn is stickier for people to stay in the team.

In fact, it's one of the things people talk about most as the benefit of being in the WoW Community we started three years ago, having access to "people like me going through things like I am," and those connections are still thriving.

Create opportunities to:

• Share experiences
• Brainstorm solutions
• Provide emotional support

We see in all of our programmes that the Connect and Reflect element is where the magic happens. The goal is to create an environment where managers feel they are not alone in their struggles and can rely on their peers for support and wisdom, a core tenet of modern coaching and succession planning.

Stay Connected at a Personal Level

Also, ensure you stay connected with your team members. It's too easy to focus on WIP meetings, though often even these fall by the wayside amidst the storm of other meetings you are both in. Making time to connect at a personal level, even over a coffee, and to talk as humans, pays huge dividends.

A 2015 study of 2.5 million manager-led teams in 195 countries found that workforce engagement improved significantly when supervisors had some form of daily communication with their team members.

Maintaining open communication and giving regular feedback is essential for long-term talent retention.

Ten Conversations Worth Having in Your One-to-Ones

From our experience, it is pretty challenging to find a leader who doesn't care. But there are plenty of leaders who are overloaded and who don't have or make the time to stop and ask what care looks like for each member of their team. This leads to the perception that their actions and behaviours are not caring, even when the intent is good.

If you are seeing turnover or burnout creep up, focus your one-to-one conversations on helping your managers to:

• Feel genuinely cared about as a person, not just as a function
• Clarify the work expectations they are under, and explore whether those are reasonable in their eyes and yours
• Talk about what they have learned in their role and where they want to grow their career
• Connect the dots on how their work contributes to the bigger picture
• Identify what they need to keep their wellbeing intact
• Understand the full range of employee benefits and support available to them
• Make their work as flexible as practically possible
• Grow their network across the business and feel more connected to the team
• Confirm the resources they need and whether you can provide them
• Review the amount of travel required, when and for what purpose, given that travel carries a much higher cost on people than it once did

This list will give you ten substantive conversations for your one-to-ones. It will help you understand your managers' potential reasons for leaving before they check out, rather than discovering them in an exit interview.

3. Clarify Purpose and Impact

Make Purpose Real at Every Level

Managers, like all employees, need to see how their work contributes to the broader organisational goals. When managers understand the impact of their contributions, they feel more motivated and engaged. However, this understanding must be deeply ingrained at all levels of the organisation, often supported by tools like Workday or SuccessFactors to track career growth.

We teach a framework called the Purpose Pyramid that our participants state is probably the biggest lightbulb moment they have when it comes to unlocking their and their team's performance. We work through clarifying and aligning the personal, role, team, and organisational Purposes for everyone, removing ambiguity.

Communicate and Celebrate Progress

Regularly communicate the organisation's mission and vision, and make sure these are not just words on a wall but lived values within the company, and show how each manager's role fits into this vision.

Celebrate progress milestones and show how each manager's efforts align with the company's success. This not only reinforces the importance of their work but also aligns their daily tasks with the organisation's strategic objectives. Effective recognition and ensuring a healthy work-life balance are key drivers here.

Help Managers Articulate the Vision

Additionally, help managers develop the skills to articulate this vision to their teams. When managers can clearly convey how their team's work contributes to the organisation's success, it enhances the team's sense of purpose and motivation.

Gallup research indicates that when leaders articulate a clear purpose, 78% of employees feel their leadership is effective. This clarity drives alignment and commitment, leading to improved performance and a more cohesive team. So not only will it reinforce your leadership impact, but it will enhance the management structure too. Utilising platforms like Culture Amp or Qualtrics Employee Experience can help measure and boost employee satisfaction and management training effectiveness.

The Power of Investing in Your Managers

The Center for Creative Leadership found that organisations with strong leadership development programmes have a 24% higher profit margin than those without. This highlights the tangible benefits of investing in your managers' growth and well-being. The challenge many have is that they have reached roles where they are leading managers and have had no support since that first management 101 programme, and we know the skills and tools at this level are very different. We have discussed this in several previous blogs so feel free to check them out.

Talent management at this level should be focused on identifying, supporting, and retaining your internal talent. Pay particular attention to how you can help them feel cared about and supported. Then work hard on helping them perceive all the good things your organisation is doing on their behalf. This tackles both retention and burnout at the same time, and it starts with the conversations you choose to have this week.

Investing in proper management training not only reduces the need for exit interviews but ensures that your compensation and benefits are matched by a supportive environment that truly values your managers.