You’d be hard-pressed to find an HR thought leader who doesn’t believe having great mid-level managers is one of the biggest—if not the biggest—indicators of a high-performing team.
If training and setting objectives for managers isn’t one of your organization’s top priorities, it probably should be. Consider these stats:
The data is pretty clear that having good managers is vital to business success. But what do objectives have to do with it? And how do you know what the right objectives for managers are?
John F. Kennedy once said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” From first-time managers to veteran executives, effective leadership requires continuous learning and stretch goals that promote personal and professional growth.
Objectives for managers are the specific, measurable, and achievable targets that guide their actions and responsibilities within an organization. These objectives play a crucial role in the overall success of a manager's role and the organization as a whole.
A big part of a manager’s job is helping their team and its members achieve their goals. But don’t forget that managers need support and direction too!
Managers should indeed focus on their team members’ well-being and ensure everyone is doing their part to meet organizational goals. But outside of team-level and company-level objectives, managers should also have clearly defined personal and professional objectives to help them become more effective leaders.
Manager effectiveness is almost always directly correlated to team success. The managers who get the professional development they need and work on their own leadership goals are also the ones leading high-performing teams. (Performance can be contagious in that way.)
The specific personal objectives a manager should have are just that—personal. Just as every individual employee has different strengths and growth areas, so do managers. The key is understanding what a successful manager looks like in your organization and discovering what each manager needs to do to achieve that ideal.
Personal professional development objectives for managers are individualized goals aimed at enhancing a manager's leadership and personal skills. These objectives focus on improving competencies such as communication, conflict resolution, and leadership abilities. They are designed to help managers excel in their roles, whether they are new to management or looking to deepen their expertise in a specific industry or function.
Business growth objectives for managers are centered on driving the expansion and success of an organization. These objectives can include specific targets related to revenue generation, market share, or cost reduction. Managers with business growth objectives are responsible for developing strategies and leading teams to achieve these goals, contributing directly to the company's financial success.
Employee development objectives for managers are focused on fostering a positive work environment and improving the performance and satisfaction of team members. These objectives may involve enhancing team skills, increasing employee engagement and satisfaction, and conducting regular performance appraisals and feedback sessions to aid in the professional growth of the staff.
Recruitment objectives for managers involve the process of acquiring top talent to meet the organization's staffing needs. These objectives encompass defining recruitment strategies, participating in candidate interviews, and ensuring the team is staffed with qualified individuals. Additionally, they may include goals related to diversity and inclusion, with an aim to create a diverse and inclusive workforce, as well as objectives for successfully onboarding and integrating new employees into the team and company culture.
There are many different processes and methodologies out there for setting goals. The method your organization chooses is a matter of preference and what fits your organization best. What matters most is that you have a proven system in place because you don’t want to leave goal-setting up to chance.
15Five uses and recommends the OKR system for goal setting at all levels of an organization. The Big O—Objectives—represents the goals of the organization, teams, and individuals (including managers). KR—Key Results—provide the metrics to gauge performance toward those goals.
OKRs help align and motivate teams and individuals to reach personal and professional goals. They describe what an individual (or team or organization) wants to achieve and what success toward that goal looks like. OKRs offer a way to formalize job performance goals for managers and document an action plan to achieve them.
From fostering diversity and inclusion to enhancing operational efficiency, a manager's goals can span a wide spectrum. In this section of the blog, we'll explore various types of manager objectives through practical examples, shedding light on how these objectives can be structured using the popular OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework.
Objective: Improve Industry Knowledge
Objective: Network with managers from other companies
Objective: Reduce the cost of resources
Objective: Improve quality standards
Objective: Improve employee retention
Objective: Implement Peer Mentoring Programs
Objective: Network with prospective talent
Objective: Increase efficiency of onboarding
Effective managers are able to motivate and enable their direct reports to perform at a high level and reach their full potential. They can have a lasting impact on a team and organization.
But this doesn’t happen by accident.
To say someone is a “born leader” is selling them short. Sure, some people are born with certain traits that lend well to leadership, but most great leaders become who they are through personal learning and growth.
But not all managers are getting the development they need.
When surveying managers and employees for our 2023 Manager Effectiveness Report, we found that managers are desperate for more training and development—and employees want their managers to get it. (We also found that over 76% of candidates for open manager roles are more likely to accept a position when management training or coaching is offered.)
With a formalized management development training program (and a goal-setting framework like OKRs), managers can establish their objectives and identify the training they need to become better leaders.
As Kathi Enderes, VP of Research at the Josh Bersin Company, said, “Developing the types of leadership capabilities needed for today’s work world takes more than traditional training. Coaching, practice, and ongoing feedback are required in order to make sustained change, and most companies have found this type of development to be prohibitively expensive. Solutions like 15Five Transform can help companies foster these next-generation leadership capabilities in a scalable and efficient way.”
We surveyed 1,000 managers and 1,000 employees across the U.S. on productivity tracking, manager effectiveness and training, career growth, and professional development. See what our study uncovered about how employees and managers (really) feel about training, development, and goal setting.