🔗 Why people really quit — and how great managers make them want to stay

You may have heard the saying: people don’t leave their jobs, they leave their managers. More specifically, they leave micromanagers and absentee managers.

At Radical Candor, we call the practice of managers who have low, almost non-existent involvement in their team’s work absentee management. Those with extremely (maybe excruciatingly) close involvement are micromanaging — and this has increased to include digital surveillance for many remote workers.

In between absentee and micromanagement are those committed to thought partnership, the ones who empower, enable and encourage their teams to do the best work of their lives.

How can you determine where you fall on this spectrum so you can learn how to move in the right direction instead of being a micromanager or an absentee manager? (We want to emphasize that these are behaviors and not personality traits.)

To help you figure out when you’re being a good partner rather than slipping into micromanagement or absentee management, I’ve developed a simple chart. I hope it will help you better partner with the people who report to you.

One of the best ways to keep the people on your team engaged is by actively partnering with them.