What Great Managers Do Daily

John: All right. Welcome back to another episode of Green Apple Slices. I have with me the head of Deloitte’s universe, Rachel Fisch. What’s the exact title now? I forget. I keep forgetting.

Rachel: National Bookkeeping Lead, Deloitte Canada.

John: There it is, and it’s important that you just say Canada because we don’t want you to think it’s global.

Rachel: No.

John: But yeah, I’m so excited that you’re here. Just so that everybody know, you can go to greenapplepodcast.com and you can see links to all the articles that we talk about, as well as other episodes. Check that out at greenapplepodcast.com. But every Monday, I always feel the pressure because it’s your reason for looking forward to Mondays, and mine as well, and I feel like I just have to carry the load here. I’m always so nervous.

Rachel: No, it’s a joint load. It’s good, yeah.

John: Yeah. I’ve got an article that I found. It’s called What Great Managers Do Daily. That was in Harvard Business Review by Ryan Fuller and Nina Shikaloff. Yeah, I thought it was a really great article, some really cool things.

Rachel: I actually thought that too. I really enjoyed it.

John: Yeah, because I mean so much depends on managers. There’s that statistic that they even quote but I knew before was just that 70% of people leave their job because of their manager being terrible.

Rachel: Yeah. People don’t quit job for the company. Usually, it’s for the managers with them.

John: Right. I’ve done it myself. It’s very rare that I actually received any managerial duties so I was always the one below. But yeah, I certainly had times where I was like, “I’m out of here.” So, this article is great because it tells you things that you can do daily. They’re small things, they’re simple things, so it’s not overwhelming. One of the big examples that I thought was really great was just lead by example. You talked about how — don’t expect your staff to work long hours on a project if you’re also not going to put in long hours on the project.

Rachel: Right, like I’m sure I’m not the only one who — you know, boss leaves at two o’clock to go play golf. And before they leave, they put this huge stack of work that’s going to take you to midnight and then, “Okay. See you. Have a weekend.” Yeah, it was talking about where there’s a real large disconnection between the number of hours that employee works in relation to the number of hours that the manager works. So, there’s a direct correlation to the engagement there. I was kind of hoping that it would just be this really simple to-do list that I could say, “What great managers do daily? Here’s your to-do list.” And I could check them off. I’m like, “Oh no, I have to read and think.” When it comes to these items that can be done daily, it’s like, “Okay, we’re giving you kind of the overall principle.” This can’t be accomplished within a day but at least there are definitely some things that you can do every day to work towards some of this goal. So I thought that that was really great.

John: Right, right. Instead of reading the article, you can just listen to us, tell you what they are and you’re welcome, everybody. There we go, there we go.

Rachel: There are like ones that are easy to read. There are others that are not so reader-friendly but this is really great. It really talked about kind of the effect of — you kind of know the tree by its fruit, right? So, if you have a really great engaged highly utilized staff, it’s usually because they have a really great engaged and highly utilized manager. You can’t kind of look down on the staff without considering what role that manager plays in whatever result the staff are giving you.

I think in many cases in organizations, there is a really clear path from entry level. And then all the way through the manager, if you sell a lot of stuff and you sell really well, therefore, you should be a sales manager except that that requires a whole other level of skill set when it comes to managing and encouraging and boosting the morale of your sales staff. You may not necessarily have that skill set or have that in you as a salesperson but it’s definitely something you need as a manager. I think that if you are an organization that looks at the success line of your staff, make sure that you are actually preparing them and giving them the skills that they need to be the effective manager.

John: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s for sure. One of the things that they brought up that I think is really great and when I — a recent Green Apple Podcast episode with Chris Callegari. He does this one-on-ones with his staff. Every month, he has a one hour one-on-one with everybody in his group. He said at first, it was kind of awkward, but then it just became like so great. They actually look forward to it now because you develop that rapport with your team. It’s very easy to get bogged down in the work and always work, work, work and it’s like, “Well, sometimes it’s good to just take a little breather and get to know each other” type of thing because then the work is better.

Rachel: And maybe talk about some of your hobbies and passions outside of work.

John: There we go, and actually develop a real relationship. That goes as well with developing a bigger network as a manager that you were bringing up earlier as well. I mean, you’re not going to get to know more people if you’re the smartest person in the room that knows everything technically. It’s just being a real person.

Rachel: Yeah, and your team really relies on the manager to make those connections for them and to have those relationships with other managers and with other people within the organization. Honestly, we could do a whole podcast on each one of these points. It was really great.

John: Yeah. No, really great. So, check it out everybody and go to greenapplepodcast.com and see the slices and get a link to the article and read it for yourself. There we go. Happy Monday, Rachel.

Rachel: Happy Monday, John.