Improving leader and manager effectiveness has been a longstanding challenge and opportunity for almost every company. In fact, according to the last two annual Gartner HR surveys, finding ways to improve leader and manager effectiveness has become the #1 priority of HR leaders.

It’s easy to see why they prioritize this issue so highly. Gartner found 50% of employees in US workplaces today are not confident in their manager’s ability to lead their teams to be successful over the next few years. This should not be surprising given 45% of managers spend more time managing projects than managing people.

It would be easy to blame this situation on leaders and managers. But the demands placed by most organizations on these positions over the past few years have increased dramatically …while the workplace expectations of employees are also escalating.

This effectively requires managers somehow to become people management superheroes. They must now acquire and keep talent by finding ways to increase the belonging, wellbeing, and productivity of their work groups, in an environment where group members are given greater work flexibility and hybrid work options. No wonder 54% of managers are suffering from work-induced stress and fatigue.

The question is…How can organizations’ help leaders and managers develop the skills (and capacity) needed to complete the day-to-day actions required to build high performing teams in this more complex future workplace environment?

Clearly a very different approach to this challenge is needed. 75% of HR leaders say their managers are overwhelmed by the growth of their job responsibilities. After performing their job’s core non-people tasks, leaders and managers simply have too little time/skill to thoughtfully address the everyday volume of people management issues. 

And it’s not just a time problem. 73% of HR leaders say their organization’s leaders and managers are not equipped to lead change in their workplace. But 75% of HR leaders don’t feel their current approach to improving manager development is paying off. Traditional leadership training programs are not equipping leaders and managers to personally formulate and implement the people management interventions required to improve their groups’ team-working effectiveness in the current environment.

As a result, companies are understandably searching for a new way to improve manager effectiveness in the following four key team-building dimensions: project and work management, team performance management and goal alignment, employee coaching and development and building a positive and collaborative team environment.

Clearly, the payback for finding this next generation solution will be huge. Employees who report to effective managers are significantly more engaged and have higher well-being. Not surprisingly, they are 15 times more likely to be high performers, over 3 times more likely to stay.

Fortunately, advancements in artificial intelligence have introduced an entirely new approach to helping leaders and managers meet the growing expectations of both their employees and organization.

This solution increases leader and manager people management skills and capacity by an order of magnitude by giving each work group a “Genius” AI coach. The coach not only provides each group leader with the private coaching needed to improve their team leadership effectiveness. Even better, the coach also helps the leader maximize their group’s team-working effectiveness by facilitating the group through an explicit team-building process. It also reduces the manager’s people development time demands by providing each group member with confidential 1:1 social habit improvement coaching.

The resulting improvement in the group’s team-working effectiveness and accountability can reduce managers project and people management time demands, while achieving better group performance outcomes at the same time. In summary, our solution can improve business performance and reduce leader/manager stress and workload by positively impacting all four of their core responsibilities.

Implementing this AI-powered coaching capability also helps employers and employees. By improving both manager and group member effectiveness, employees enjoy an increased sense of belonging, inclusion, and satisfaction. And the organization also gains from the measurable improvement in their workforce’s level engagement, productivity, and agility.

Contact us to learn about the compelling business case for implementing this innovative approach to leader and manager effectiveness improvement.