A manager who aligns with an employee’s personality and work tendencies makes all the difference to that person’s success. I have had both managers who aligned well with me and others who did not, so I know from firsthand experience how powerful this alignment can be.
The question I pose is whether organizations should attempt manager/employee matchmaking. When a work group needs a new manager, should the hiring decision-maker consider the most common personality and work style in that group of employees when selecting the person to hire as manager?
Finding the Right Match for a Work Group
Matchmaking is trickier when it involves a whole group of employees versus just one employee and one new manager. Nevertheless, there are factors that might provide an early indication that it will or will not work.
First, what is the culture of the work group? Are they used to structured, micro-managed routines and deadlines or was the out-going manager more hands-off? If the group is used to a manager who took a hands-off approach and suddenly a manager who likes to exercise a lot of control comes in, that could court trouble.
Rather than asking a work group to conform to the management style of a new boss, you could choose a new boss for them who is used to working in the same way the old boss worked.
Is the work group known for being more fun loving and playful in nature or more serious and solitary? Some work groups only gather and converse for business purposes. You rarely hear them joking around or laughing together or heading out for an afterhours gathering. If a new manager has more of a fun-loving nature, they may be received with pushback and hostility.
Is the group the manager will be overseeing creative in their work or more data driven? Assigning a boss who has a data-driven personality to a group of creative-minded individuals likely will pose challenges.
I’m a creative-minded person and I experienced what it’s like to have a technocrat-bureaucrat personality take over as boss of my work group. I was used to freeform conversations full of ideas and ramblings, and suddenly every meeting revolved around a numbers report. There was even a spreadsheet created in which we had to document our accomplishments from the previous week and our goals for the next. You can imagine how much fun a creative-minded person would find this.
One-to-One Matches
As I have previously written, whenever possible, it’s a good idea to get feedback from employees about potential new managers, and then take that feedback seriously.
If a new boss coming in likely will not align well with one or two valued employees in a work group, is there a way to find a management workaround? In some cases, it may be possible to allow those one or two employees to report to a different manager. Or maybe you task them with collaborating and coordinating with the new manager of the group, but their performance, progress, and career progression, is determined by a different individual, such as the manager’s boss, or another executive.
In development plans, you could get feedback every year from employees on what they perceive to be their management needs and whether their current boss, or a new one coming in, is meeting those needs or will be likely to meet those needs.
I can envision a system in which the development of each employee takes into consideration whether they are matched with the right boss for their personality, work style, and talents.
Create Your Own Employee/Manager Matchmaking Site
Just as there are dating Websites, you could create an internal Website especially for the purpose of matching each employee with the best manager especially for them.
Questions could be used to gauge how much close management they expect. Do they like to be spoon-fed by managers or do they like free rein with check-in where they’re the ones in control, proactively asking the manager for what they need?
Generative artificial intelligence could even be used to have each succeeding question build from the previous one. If the employee responds that they don’t like to feel micro-managed, the system could ask them why and ask for an example or two of times over the course of their career when they felt like their manager was not giving them enough breathing room.
Don’t Lose a Valued Employee to a Bad Manager Fit
Sometimes the problem isn’t the employee; it’s the manager. Before writing off or eliminating an employee, explore the alternative of assigning a new manager to them or at least having a conversation with them to determine whether this is a performance or manager misfit issue.
Do you do any form of employee/manager matchmaking in your organization? If so, how do you do it?