How many truly great managers have you had in your life?

We’re talking the ones who really get that their job is about nurturing and not numbers, empowerment and not employee count.

You know, the ones who understand that the more they respect and trust the people they supervise, the harder they’ll work to build up the business (and their manager).

The bar is set pretty low when the litmus test for a great manager is whether they grasp the kindergarten-simple concept that if you take care of people they’ll take care of you. But I’m utterly gobsmacked at the number of managers who don’t get it.

Anyhow …

The answer to the opening question is three.

There was my first publisher, Bob, who turned over the keys to his baby, a national-newsstand magazine called Baseball Cards, and let me do practically whatever I wanted with it.

I was totally green and fearless, so I gave it both barrels: a Car And Driver-influenced redesign complete with sarcastic editor’s notes, imaginary columnists, my own version of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure with a couple of comic-store employees and a few cases of baseball cards, and along the way, more than a few threatened lawsuits and other huffs.

It took a world of guts for Bob to stand back and let me do all that, and protect me from his superiors when he had to, and when we started blowing the doors off the circulation projections he never got enough credit for trusting me. But Bob was doing the Steve Jobs hire-good-people-and-get-out-of-their-way thing before there was a Steve Jobs.

Then, after a string of so-sos and psychos, there was Scott. We had been colleagues, and then he was my boss. It could have been uncomfortable but it wasn’t; instead, it engendered a sense of mutual respect. Each of us knew the other’s skills – and his skills were almost entirely in managing people.

Maybe it’s the Luddite in me, but I respect craftspeople, people who can do actual things. I don’t have a lot of truck with people who tell others what to do and then stand and watch, incapable of changing a comma to a period.

Most managers are watchers, sorry to say, overseers with a whip tipped with negative performance reviews and double-secret probation.

Not Scott. For him, managing was a craft. He let good people do good work, and then made sure everyone knew whose work it was. Was he perfect? Far from it. But when his charges weren’t perfect, he gave us the luxury of getting back to our feet, dusting ourselves off and picking up where we had left off. That was huge.

Finally, there was Brad.

Brad was a triple threat – a high-school basketball coach, a talented designer, and a great marketing idea guy – but his first responsibility was always to his team. He knew that from coaching that someone may star, but ultimately the team wins.

I did more Saturday-night project work with Brad than anyone else, but I did more Friday-afternoon social time, too. And his team, though scattered, is still very much a team, unfailingly loyal to each other – and to him.

There’s not a lot these three managers had in common other than a belief in the people working for them, and the desire to give them the latitude to make their own decisions.

Oh, and they had one other thing in common: They weren’t afraid of what their employees would say about them to others, because they had created a feedback environment where it would have been said first to them.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

They’re the exception. The rule is this company I know of whose HR chief refused to conduct employee surveys or ask any employee-satisfaction questions, no matter what.

“They’re just going to ask for more money,” she said, “and we’re not going to pay them more money.”

Seeing as the company in question had a 110 percent turnover rate and a starting pay rate south of Taco Bell, there was probably good reason to be skittish. But still, what kind of attitude is that for a full-grown company to take?

Employers, supervisors, HR people, lend me your ears: You need to listen to your people. You need to ask them questions, and then you need to sit back and listen to them at all times and in all places: during their performance reviews, in social settings, on sites like Glassdoor, and on social media.

And you especially need to listen to them in a systematic fashion through employee-satisfaction research.

After this company had stonewalled any attempt at employee dialog, I told my story to some research colleagues.

“You can do employee research without asking about compensation, or without generating huge expectations that the company can’t fulfill,” they said. “Keep it focused and modest, and you can still get some great data.”

I proposed that baby-steps approach to the company in question. Their response? I close the iron door on you.

You Can See A Lot By Observing

Regardless of how their company feels on the topic, good managers do ad-hoc employee-satisfaction research. They provide multiple opportunities for feedback – constant, small bursts of feedback that let smart managers make quick micro-corrections to keep their relationships strong.

Poor managers don’t, and when they’re forced into changes it’s drastic and uncomfortable for everyone.

No matter where you are on the managerial spectrum, you can use employee-satisfaction techniques to become a better manager.

Here are some great ways to incorporate ESAT tactics into your management program:

360-degree monitoring: Gather information from multiple sources, normalize it, and stick it on a dashboard. Create an index and watch it rise and fall. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, with employees, you can see a lot by observing. As always with an index, the more valid data points the better.
Micro-surveys: Ask one-to-five-question surveys on a weekly or monthly basis. Keep them focused and topical. The smaller the scope, the more likely they are to pass through even the most impermeable iron door.
Qualitative research: Sometimes known as the employee evaluation or conference. Use it as an opportunity to do some qualitative research. Come up with a short script of satisfaction-based questions, ask everyone the same questions, compare their responses, and benchmark over time.
Dovetailing with corporate initiatives: If your company is launching an initiative that incorporates companywide communication, propose a survey focusing entirely on the success of the communication program. It’s hard for an employee to ask for more money when they’re asked, “Do you remember receiving an email on the new corporate mission statement?” (Which reminds me: To keep everyone on script, don’t ask open-ended questions. That’s where the trouble starts.)
Post-event surveys: Similarly, a satisfaction survey after an event can provide a quick litmus test on how everyone is feeling about the organization. If two-thirds of respondents didn’t go to the holiday party, and more than half of those that did give it middling marks, you can be pretty sure this is not an empowered, roll-up-your-sleeves sort of organization.

People are always going to be promoted into managerial positions not because they have any sort of managerial skill but because they’re good at a hard skill like coding.

How can you capitalize on that opportunity, and become one of those managers employees remember fondly years after they’re gone? Employing a variety of satisfaction-measurement strategies is a good start.

Want To Be A Better Manager? Here Are 5 Ways Research Can Help