By Meredith Camp

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs and surveys touting that money is not the number one driver for employee retention and satisfaction.  But what do you think the odds are that this bit of news is reaching the people it needs to reach the most: leaders and managers (especially the bad, de-motivating ones)?  So what happens when this type of valuable information doesn’t make it to those individuals’ inboxes?  Or worse still, what if those individuals don’t believe that helpful tidbit applies to them?  Honestly, how do we get through to these individuals and stop the cycle of bad leadership?
 
The results of poor management have a much larger ripple effect than they, or anyone else, might initially realize.  It goes beyond disgruntled workers and bleeds into the rest of the candidate pool.  To begin with, workers who are treated poorly or mismanaged by their leadership become disengaged, resulting in lower productivity and morale.  Not only can this negativity spread throughout the workforce, but when employees finally become fed up with the lack of respect and move on, they share their resentment with others outside the organization.  Over time, and if there is enough of this type of attrition within the agency, its reputation can become tarnished and it could potentially become very difficult to find willing and qualified individuals to fill open positions.  Higher turnover also affects the agency and the job market.  When people come and go on a regular basis within an organization, it becomes even more difficult to maintain functional teams and keep up with deliverables.  Training new staff costs the organization money; the more often new hires must be brought up to speed, the more expensive and time consuming the vicious cycle becomes.  And the greater the attrition rates, the larger the percentage of displaced workers who dropped back into the unemployment pool.  So how do we get ineffective managers to see that they need training, more support, an attitude adjustment, or simply don’t belong in a leadership position?

Have you ever been negatively impacted by poor leadership?  How did you handle it?