Eficácia da gestão: Como aproveitar o potencial dos seus colaboradores e obter resultados sólidos

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things," said the influential management consultant and theorist Peter Drucker.

Imagine a scenario where a manager is not just a supervisor but a catalyst for growth and success. This journey begins with understanding the core of managerial effectiveness: it's not solely about achieving targets or managing tasks; it's about people – understanding them, guiding them, and creating an environment where they can thrive.

When your managers are truly effective, your people's full potential will bear fruit, fuelling success for themselves and your organization.

This guide on managerial effectiveness will focus on:

• Understanding the meaning of manager effectiveness.
• Understanding how managerial effectiveness translated into organizational outcomes.
• Exploring the challenges that managers often face. For each challenge, we offer solutions and best practices.
• Exploring 8 strategies for boosting manager effectiveness at your organization.

💼 What is the meaning of manager effectiveness?

Manager effectiveness refers to the ability of a manager to achieve desired results or outcomes through the effective use of resources, including people, processes, and technology.

The more effective your leaders are, the stronger the outcomes for your people and your organization.

➡️ Find out more about what makes good managers and the qualities of stellar leadership at top organizations.

🧩 11 Dimensions of managerial effectiveness

Effective managers are defined by the skills and behaviors that guide their teams toward organizational goals.

Some of the dimensions of effective managers are:

• Goal achievement—meet or exceed set goals and objectives, including short-term targets and long-term strategic goals.
• Resource utilization—efficiently use resources such as time, budget, personnel, and technology.
• Team development and leadership—mentor and train team members and create a positive work environment.
• Decision making—use problem-solving skills to make informed, timely decisions that positively impact team members and the organization.
• Communication—be clear and effective in providing information, giving feedback, and persuading team members and the broader organization.
• Strategic thinking—have a vision that anticipates future trends and aligns team goals with the organization's goals.
• Adaptability and flexibility—Adapt to changing circumstances and opportunities and be open to new ideas and approaches.
• Relationship building—Build and maintain positive relationships with team members, peers, leaders, and stakeholders, nurturing a collaborative and supportive work environment.
• Performance management—Set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and evaluate performance fairly and constructively.
• Integrity—Uphold ethical standards and demonstrate integrity in all interactions, promoting trust and credibility.
• Employee engagement and satisfaction: Effective managers contribute to higher employee engagement and job satisfaction, leading to better performance and lower turnover.

Tip: Use a leadership competency model to capture these essential skills and behaviors for your organization.

🕵️‍♀️ How do you measure manager effectiveness?

To improve manager effectiveness, you need to measure and evaluate manager performance—here are some commonly used metrics for doing so.

Performance outcomes

Both manager and employee performance matter for assessing your managers' effectiveness. Standard metrics for monitoring performance outcomes include:

• Goal completions—meeting or exceeding set manager performance goals and objectives.
• On-target delivery—timely completion of projects and tasks.
• Achieving objectives—meeting financial and non-financial objectives, including budgetary goals, customer satisfaction metrics, and profit targets.
• Employee outcomes—employee performance metrics such as work efficiency, KPI success rates, completion rates, and quality of work to assess how well employees perform under a manager.

Team dynamics and health metrics

Metrics that help to indicate potential issues in team management:

• Team-specific metrics—attrition rates, employee net promoter scores (eNPS), etc.
• Turnover and retention rates—employee attrition rates and other metrics indicating how often employees leave or stay under a manager's leadership.
• High-performer resignation rates—tracking the departure rate of top-performing employees.
• Absenteeism—frequency of team members being absent.

Employee engagement and feedback

Employee engagement metrics provide feedback to support your people's well-being and connection with their managers:

• Employee surveys—leadership-focused questions to gauge how effective your managers are perceived.
• Engagement feedback—employee engagement surveys, feedback surveys, and pulse checks to learn about employee experiences and assess how engaged employees are.
• Employee experience—feedback on the work environment and management style.

Career development metrics

Metrics to support career and professional development opportunities:

• Promotions rate—frequency of team member promotions, indicating how effective talent development has been.
• Succession planning—how well a manager prepares team members for future leadership roles.

Review and evaluation of management effectiveness

Metrics to help with improving manager effectiveness:

• Performance reviews—formally assessing a manager's performance by superiors, peers, or stakeholders.
• Manager engagement scores—monitoring the level of engagement of your managers and how this translates to success for their teams.

🪜 How can HR improve manager effectiveness? 8 Strategies

You can help develop and sustain great managers in the following ways:

Formação e desenvolvimento

Training and developing your managers helps them be more adept at navigating their workplace environments and team dynamics, boosting their potential for manager effectiveness. 

Helpful areas for training include:

• Leadership skills: To help your managers understand the nuances of leading a team, making strategic decisions, inspiring others, and tackling decision-making, problem-solving, and strategic planning.
• Coaching skills: To teach managers how to foster growth in their people by providing a vision for their career paths and facilitating progress through guidance, support, and mentoring.
• Emotional intelligence: To assist managers in understanding and managing their emotions and those of their team members, leading to better communication, feedback, and team dynamics.
• Conflict resolution: To give managers the tools and techniques for handling disputes and supporting a harmonious team environment.
• Communication skills: To equip managers with knowledge and practice in the styles, strategies, and modes of communication that support successful teams.
• Strategic planning: To help managers interpret your organization's vision and translate it to how they lead their teams, including skills in research and analysis and the ability to delegate tasks to support organizational goals.

➡️ Make your managers more effective through training in key development areas for your leaders, encompassing individual leadership development plans and relevant leadership topics for training.

Regular feedback and coaching

Continuous employee feedback and active listening are essential to being an effective manager. They help your managers: 

• Forge strong relationships. 
• Foster employee development. 
• Enhance collaboration. 
• Drive productivity.

Continuous feedback will also give your managers constructive input and guidance on their performance, helping them identify areas for improvement and opportunities for growth.

Regular coaching sessions further support managers by identifying clear paths for developing their skills further.

➡️ Learn how to give constructive feedback to your leaders to promote fairness, growth, and professional development.

Performance management training

Training your managers in performance management helps them set clear goals, monitor progress, and provide timely recognition and rewards for their teams.

A well-designed performance management system enables better monitoring of team members' progress against objectives, resource requirements, well-being, and training gaps. 

Training your managers in these areas ensures they know how to establish the right goals and objectives, encourage ongoing communication, conduct effective performance reviews, and recognize their people in a way that motivates and inspires them.

A critical element of effective performance management is knowing how to give and receive feedback. This helps support a growth-oriented culture by promoting trust, respect, and empathy. It also assists your managers in navigating sensitive topics for many employees, i.e., areas where they feel uncomfortable or defensive without the right level of compassion, understanding, and honesty.

➡️ Unleash the potential of performance management by training your managers to set goals for employees and work within constructive goal-setting frameworks.

Planeamento da sucessão

Prepare your managers for higher responsibilities through succession planning. This includes: 

• Identifying business-critical roles. 
• Defining role expectations. 
• Identifying candidates. 
• Creating professional development opportunities that support progress toward successor roles.

Adopt best-practice approaches by integrating succession planning with employee growth frameworks, considering a vast pool of candidates to ensure the best fit, and incorporating the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in your process.

➡️ Give your managers the best leadership training by emulating the success of exemplary leadership development programs.

Empowering managers

Enhance your managers' effectiveness by empowering them to act as coaches. Train your managers to be constructive manager-as-coaches and: 

• Ask questions instead of (defaulting to) answer-provision. 
• Support people instead of judging them. 
• Facilitate growth rather than stifling aspirations.

Training and development areas for empowering your managers include:

• Performance management skills to help translate strategy into action and support employees' aspirations toward outcomes.
• Guidance on supporting people in setting constructive professional development goals that align with organizational goals.
• Continuous performance development to boost team effectiveness through a regular, consistent, and honest feedback approach.
• Continuous learning to stay up-to-date with current leadership skills and approaches.

➡️ Empower your managers to bring out the best in their people by giving them practical coaching skills training.

Resolving conflict

Help your managers mediate disputes and address issues swiftly and fairly. Offer conflict resolution training to teach them techniques for maintaining a harmonious team environment despite the disagreements and misunderstandings that may arise.

Such training also gives your managers a better understanding of team dynamics, employee morale, and performance management, further improving manager effectiveness and their ability to lead high-performing teams.

Formação de equipas

Team building is deemed a hallmark of great managers. 

Support your managers in team-building initiatives to foster trust, employee engagement, and collaboration. Team building also helps leaders communicate better with their people, boost performance, improve productivity, and encourage innovation within their teams, according to Indeed.

HR tools

Give your managers access to tools to effectively lead and organize their people. Equip them with user-friendly HR tools for scheduling, time-tracking, and performance monitoring. This helps your managers boost efficiency and drive performance.

➡️ Facilitate high-performance teams in your organization by giving your managers access to cutting-edge performance management tools, career development tools, career management software, and AI-based learning management systems

💡How to overcome 7 common challenges to managerial effectiveness with Zavvy

Improving managerial effectiveness isn't always easy—here are some ways that Zavvy can help you overcome the most common challenges:

The need for continuous learning and adaptation

"Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing." Warren Bennis, organizational consultant and scholar.

The business context and your organization's response to it are constantly evolving. To be effective leaders, your managers must keep pace with new trends, technologies, and methodologies.

Rapid developments in AI are a case in point—are your managers keeping up with the capabilities and risks of large language models like ChatGPT?

If your people don't keep up, they can fall behind your competitors in leveraging such technology for productivity and innovation. Or worse, they'll be susceptible to the risks associated with these powerful models, e.g., not being sufficiently aware of the potential for fake or misleading information produced by "generative AI" models.

💡 Solution: Provide your people with world-class training using cutting-edge platforms and techniques.

Zavvy's learning experience platform gives you access to hundreds of learning resources from dozens of world-class providers, including Udemy, EdX, SkillShare, Coursera, Code Academy, and Blinkist.

Give your managers the learning materials they're looking for in their chosen format. Zavvy's courses are carefully curated by learning scientists, and you can add courses you already created for your organization via SCORM.

You can also develop training programs using Zavvy's integrated learning management system (LMS).

Create and run courses you've designed specifically for your people, letting Zavvy's LMS handle scheduling, manual assignments, reminders, and tracking progress. There are even built-in AI capabilities to make your course design process as smart and efficient as possible.

Maintaining clear and consistent communication

"The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success." James Cash Penney, businessman, entrepreneur, and founder of JC Penney.

Clear communication prevents misunderstandings, aligns team efforts with organizational goals, and builds trust. Maintaining clear and consistent communications can be challenging for managers, particularly in diverse and distributed teams.

💡 Solution: Teach your managers to communicate with impact, whether in groups or one-on-one.

Use Zavvy's powerful training platform to teach your managers the skills required for effective communication. 

With Zavvy's communication training, your managers will learn how to communicate "impactfully" while incorporating active listening and empathetic understanding.

To supplement the training, leverage Zavvy's versatile one-on-one meeting software to give your managers opportunities to communicate with their people at a personal level. The software allows you to create collaborative agendas, set up "pulse" questions, keep track of action items and milestones, and include private notes.

All with the ease and convenience of an integrated, capable platform.

Conducting thorough and effective performance reviews

Constructive performance reviews help your managers identify areas for improvement, set goals for their people and motivate their teams. However, conducting effective reviews can be challenging.

💡 Solution: Design a customized review and feedback system that's comprehensive, targeted, and versatile.

With Zavvy, you can design and implement your performance review framework with ease, ensuring your managers understand their people's performances and stay on track with their evolution, using:

• Performance review software to run transparent and meaningful reviews that are efficient and customizable.
• Goal management software to align your people with their aspirations, competency gaps, and organizational priorities.
• 360 feedback software to drive performance and career progression based on multifaceted feedback, integrated tools for one-on-ones, development discussions, and AI-assisted feedback evaluation.

Coaching employees and guiding their development

"All coaching is, is taking a player where he can't take himself." Bill McCartney, acclaimed football coach.

By acting as coaches for their people, your managers can enhance employee skills, improve performance, and motivate team members. Not all managers are naturally skilled, however, in coaching and mentoring.

💡 Solution: Develop your managers' coaching skills and support your people's career paths.

Zavvy's leadership development software helps you develop your leaders using competency models, 360 degree feedback, and AI-assisted development paths. Supplement this with specific coaching skills training designed to instill a manager-as-coach mindset in your leaders and promote their coaching attributes, e.g., communication skills, active listening, emotional intelligence, and persuasion.

Give your managers the tools and resources to guide their people's development using Zavvy's career pathing and employee development software. These help your managers:

• Build clear requirements for each role and level in their teams.
• Move people between roles through transparent and well-understood pathways.
• Guide their teams on upskilling based on identified career pathways.
• Empower employees to take more control of their career direction by connecting skills, career paths, and development opportunities.
• Use insightful analytics to track career progression for all team members and identify gaps.
• Use powerful automation to save time and reduce tedious setup and administration work.

Motivating employees

Motivated employees are more productive, engaged, and committed to their work, leading to better outcomes for them and your organization. 

But it isn't always easy for your managers to motivate their people, especially during change or uncertainty. And different employees are motivated by various factors, and your managers need to understand and address this.

💡 Solution: Give your managers tools to motivate their people through connections, recognition, and facilitating their aspirations

Enhance employee motivation by leveraging Zavvy's employee development plans to boost people's morale and productivity. Recognize contributions so your people feel appreciated and develop a stronger sense of belonging to your organization.

Get your managers involved in these practices as a matter of routine.

Your managers can also motivate their people by forming deeper connections using Zavvy's connection programs software:

• Schedule routine catch-ups with team members to promote meaningful conversations and idea-sharing.
• Help bring remote employees closer to their colleagues through regular interactions.
• Deploy science-based templates designed to bring colleagues closer together in a way that strengthens bonds and builds trust.

Engaging and retaining employees

"Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person—not just an employee—are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability." Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox.

The more engaged your people are, the more likely they'll be loyal to your organization and the less likely they'll want to leave. But, engaging your people involves more than mere social events and friendly conversations.

💡 Solution: Help your managers engage with their people easily and seamlessly.

Let Zavvy help your managers engage meaningfully using:

• Employee engagement software to drive engagement by collecting responses to customized surveys delivered to targeted audiences and identifying obstacles to engagement through discerning metrics.
• Anonymous fseedback tools to get honest, candid, and transparent feedback that give your managers insights into their people's levels of satisfaction and well-being.
• ENPS software to measure and monitor satisfaction levels easily using the tried and tested eNPS framework.

Keeping track of skill levels and competency gaps within teams

By understanding where competency gaps are, your managers can allocate tasks more effectively and identify targeted training and development opportunities.

💡 Solution: Use a structured approach to identify and address competency gaps

Zavvy has versatile tools for discovering and managing competency development opportunities:

• Use Zavvy's skills matrix to drill down into team performance and skill profiles. Understand strengths and skill gaps through data and visualization tools.
• Measure, manage, and train competencies with Zavvy's competency management software, incorporating better role clarity, more meaningful feedback, and focused training pathways.

🏆 What are the benefits of managerial effectiveness?

Improved manager effectiveness translates to several potential benefits for your organization:

• More engaged employees—Employees who work with a more effective manager are likelier to be engaged. Research has shown.
• More positive work environment—Businesses with highly engaged employees are more appealing to work for, receiving twice as many job applications. Their people are more enthusiastic about their work and attendance, with up to 81 percent less absenteeism and 14 percent more productivity, says Gallup.
• Higher employee retention—Employees reporting to effective managers are more likely to perform well and 3x more likely to stay with their employer, Gartner research has found.
• Increased productivity—Effective managers bring out the best in their people: high-performing employees are 4x more productive than average employees, according to a McKinsey study.
• Attracting talent—When your managers are more effective, they provide better support to their people and become more sought-after: over three-quarters (77 percent) of employees place increased importance on manager support, reports Gartner.

➡️ Elevate managerial effectiveness and impact with Zavvy

Zavvy is more than just another HR tool. With world-class technology and research-backed methodologies, Zavvy can help you through customized workshops, expert guidance, and efficient execution.

📅 Book a free 30-minute demo to see how Zavvy can help make your leaders more effective.

❓ FAQs

What is the definition of managerial effectiveness?

Managerial effectiveness refers to the extent to which a manager is able to meet or exceed the objectives and goals set for their role within an organization. It covers elements such as goal achievement, resource utilization, decision-making, etc.

What are examples of effectiveness in management?

Effective managers demonstrate strategic thinking, adaptability, communication skills, integrity, clever resource utilization, and success in achieving goals.