Latest / UNLEASHED By LoyaltyOps / Only 1 in 4 Employees Say Managing Looks Attractive
Transcript
- Mickey Anderson: Last week, Ipsos released a study of 9,100 employees in 32 countries. Just one in four said becoming a people manager looks attractive based on what they see in their organization today. Two days later, Korn Ferry reported that 66% of more than 1,300 talent and senior leaders it surveyed expect managers to spend more time guiding their teams through change than managing their day-to-day work. So when your people watch how your leaders lead, does leading people look worth taking on? This is Unleashed, a podcast from Loyalty Ops. I'm Mickey Anderson, and every week I ask what it takes to build a business that lasts in a decade no one's prepared for. Today, we're looking at new research on how people decide whether they want to lead, why the leadership part of the role is asking more of people at the same time, and what it means in a company of 30 to 300 people, where most of your future leaders probably already work with you. By the end, you'll have one question to ask in your one-on-ones this week and a way to act on what you hear. let's start with the research. Ipsos, the global market research company, published a study called The Workplace Reality on October 20th of this year. It draws on 9,100 employees across 32 countries. Here's the finding I want to focus on today. just one in four say becoming a people manager. Looks attractive based on what they see in their organization today. And Ipsos describes what's behind that number in one sentence. Management is increasingly viewed as a burden rather than a reward, particularly where career support is lacking. Now I want to take a minute on terms because the research uses them loosely. A manager is a role, someone with people reporting to them. Leadership is what the person in that role does with their people, how they set direction, hold the standard, make decisions and develop the people around them. Someone can hold the title and do very little leading, and someone with no title can lead. When these studies say manager, I'm going to be focusing on the leadership part of that job because that's the part your people are watching. the findings in this study are based on what people see in their own organizations today. People form their view of what leading people involves by watching the leaders they already have. Ipsos found that career support is the factor most consistently linked to three things: people recommending their employer, people planning to stay, and people wanting to take on a people manager role. This is self-reported from employees across 32 countries. And Ipsos hasn't published its full method on the public page So we'll treat the one in four as a strong signal of direction. Now here's what I see. When good people turn down a leadership role, they've usually watched the job up close and decided the trade doesn't look worth it. So here's the question for you to consider. If your best individual contributor described what leading people in your company looks like, what would they say? Tell me in the comments what you think they'd say. Here's why this matters more now than it did a few years ago. On October 22nd, Korn Ferry, the global consulting firm, published its talent forecast for 2027. It surveyed more than 1,300 talent and senior leaders across more than 75 countries. 66% expect managers to spend more time guiding their teams through change than managing their day-to-day work. Ninety one percent say coaching and people skills will become more important, and seventy eight percent say too few people are prepared for how work will be done in the future. Let's think about that 66% and what it describes. So less of the role of managing is day-to-day work, and more of it is leading people through change. That's a shift towards leadership. Korn Fairy also found that 63% expect AI agents to take over routine tasks. Now, whatever that looks like in your company, it leaves more of the role as leadership, explaining change, coaching, and helping people. To learn new work. My view on this is guiding people through change is the part of the job that's hardest to see from the outside. What people do see is the meetings, the late night emails, and the problems that land on the leader's desk. when we put those two studies side by side, the leadership part of the role is growing, and fewer people look at it and actually want it. These are forecasts from talent and senior leaders, and they line up with what employees told Ipsos. there's a second study that shows what happens to trust in managers when change goes well and when it doesn't. On October 6th, Edelman published its trust at work research from more than 10,000 employees in 10 markets, including Canada, and it found that trust in direct managers fell from 79% to 72%, which is a record low in its data. Seventy-six percent of employees had been through at least one major change at work in the past year. Among people whose experience of that change was positive, 85% trusted their manager. people whose experience was negative, 60% did. And in Canada, 44% said their experience of change wasn't positive. So, what does it tell us? Well, that gap is the leadership part of the role When change goes badly, the person leading is often the one whose trust takes the hit. And the people who might lead next are watching it happen. Edelman's study is a broad employee survey across 10 markets So we're going to use it as context alongside the two newer studies here. But my view is that. This is the part of the job your people see most clearly. They watch how the person they report to leads them through a hard change and they decide whether they'd want to lead that way. Before I move on, if you're finding this useful, please take a second to like this episode and subscribe so next week's episode shows up in your feed. It helps more than you know. Now let's get back to the research. Gallup has studied managers for decades, and in a report this July, they put it very simply. Gallup has consistently found that managers are the primary way employees experience their organization. Gallup's data also shows that managers themselves are among the groups with the sharpest drops in engagement since twenty twenty. So the people your future leaders are watching are often having a harder time than they were a few years ago. Here's what that means in a small to mid sized company. Most of your future leaders likely already work for you. You'll promote them from the inside, and they've been watching your leaders the whole time. There's very little distance. Your people sit in the same meetings as your leaders, see how decisions get made, and hear how leaders talk about their own jobs. Now ask yourself what they see. Does a leader here get support, get developed, and get to do work they're proud of? Or does the job look like absorbing everyone else's problems? The way your leaders talk about leading is part of leading. A leader who describes their week as something to survive is telling their people what leadership costs. Ipsos linked career support most closely to wanting to take on a people manager role. In a smaller company, that support usually comes from one person, the leader directly above. So it really depends on every leader doing it. There's one more finding from Ipsos that matters for what you do next. Listening without visible action is worse than not listening at all. Ipsos also reports the other side of it. Being open about what you heard and what you plan to do about it is itself seen as action. So if you ask your people a question, Plan on getting back to them with an answer. Here's something you can do this week. In your next three one-on-ones, ask one question. From what you see, what does leading people here look like? Then listen. Write down what you hear. Your first step is to actually write that question at the top of your one-on-one notes today so it doesn't get skipped. And if you lead others, ask each of them to do the same with one or two of their people and bring what you all heard to your next leadership meeting. Here is what to listen for when you ask the question. Listen for whether people mention support, someone supporting the leader, developing them, backing their decisions. Listen for what they've watched, a leader working late, a leader handling hard conversations well, a leader who seems to enjoy developing people. Keep it a real question and thank people for their honest answers. And don't defend how your leaders lead in the moment. When you put the answers side by side, look for anything people describe that they'd want. If everything they describe is a cost, that's what your leaders are showing them. You'll know it's working when someone names a part of leading they'd want for themselves. Then close the loop, the most important part. Go back to the people you asked. Tell them what you heard. And tell them one thing your leadership team will do differently. That's the visible action that the Ipsos research points to. Your people are deciding whether to lead by watching how your leaders lead today. So make sure what they see is a leadership role worth stepping into. If this was useful, please subscribe to Unleashed wherever you're watching or listening. Every week, you'll get something you can use to become a measurably better leader and improve leadership and performance across your organization. And tell me in the comments what your people said when you asked them. I'd love to hear and I'll see you next week.