Welcome to the forty-eighth issue of CEE News!

Today’s organizations are fighting a workforce trifecta of facts. Fact 1: There are 1 million more job openings in the U.S. than workers to fill them. Fact 2: The employee quit rate in the U.S. has hit a 17-year high. Fact 3: Workplace burnout is being upgraded as a syndrome linked to chronic stress by the World Health Organization in its International Classification of Diseases. In short, managers are trying to get more done with fewer people at a greater risk to their own health. It gets worse.

A study by Harvard Business School found that more than half of a manager’s time is spent on administrative tasks and only 7% of their time (about 2.8 hours per week) is spent on developing people and engaging with stakeholders. After engaging stakeholders, developing people is likely closer to 1 hour per week. This chronic lack of time spent on employee development is equivalent to the phenomenon known as ghosting which perpetuates both the quit rate and burnout effect.

To break this cycle, the role and purpose of today’s managers requires a fundamental change – from controlling to coaching. While the world’s workplaces have been going through extraordinary historical change, the practice of management has been stuck in time for more than 30 years. The new workforce – especially younger generations – wants their work to have deep mission and purpose, and they don’t want old-style command-and-control bosses. They want coaches who inspire them, communicate with them frequently and develop their strengths.

Effective management training and coaching aligns the unique contribution of individuals with your organization’s strategic business goals. By helping your managers improve their coaching skills, they can work with their direct reports to foster skill development, impart knowledge, and inculcate values and behaviors that will help them achieve your organizational goals and prepare them for more challenging assignments in the future.

This year we launched 5 Frame Coaching: Developing the Manager As Coach program (MAC for short) with Michael J. Coffey, our Senior Executive Consultant, that helps solve this problem. If your management training efforts are met with a collective yawn, the MAC program includes training, coaching, a MAC toolkit and a series of reinforcement videos that I encourage you to check out.  To learn more, just email me at snasim@executiveexcellence.

The “5 Frame Coaching: Developing the Manager as Coach Program” was the most comprehensive coaching program I have experienced in my 30 years of leadership.  It was designed not only for new leaders, but also has something to offer seasoned senior executives! 

– James Wyatt
Vice President / Member Services
Visions Federal Credit Union

Sheri Nasim | President & CEO