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How In Touch With Reality Are You As A Manager?
One of the many key traits of successful managers is their level of self awareness. Raising your self awareness comes from reflecting on how you think you are doing and asking for feedback from others.
On the face of it this should not be that difficult to do. On the other hand recent research from the CIPD shows that there is a huge gap between perceptions and reality among the UK’s 8 million managers.
While I was expecting that there would be some differences between what employees and managers thought, the differences to say the least were stark.
Here are just a few of the things that the research highlighted.
Six in ten (61%) of managers claim they meet each person they manage at least twice a month to talk about their workload, meeting objectives and other work-related issues. However, just 24% of employees say they meet their managers with such frequency.
More than 90% of managers say they sometimes or always coach the people they manage when they meet, while only 40% of employees agree.
Three quarters (75%) of managers say they always/sometimes discuss employees’ development and career progression during one to ones, but just 38% of employees say this happens.
There are similar gaps in views between managers and employees on how often managers: joint problem solve with employees; discuss ideas employees might have to improve the business and; discuss employees’ wellbeing.
You can find a press release and access to the research in full here
With managers having a huge role to play in the success of the organisation there is clearly an opportunity to raise self awareness and at the same time gain greater engagement and ultimately bottom line results.
I wonder what your experiences have been when it came to self awareness among managers.
Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps highly successful professional people to become highly effective managers. He invites you to check out his free management mastery e-course.
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.