The immediate manager is one of the factors with the greatest influence on how employees experience their work. Both workplace research and practical experience point in that direction.
That leads to an uncomfortable realisation for many managers: a substantial part of what determines an employee's wellbeing lies within your reach, including when the wider circumstances are difficult.
Wellbeing is more than satisfaction
Wellbeing is often confused with satisfaction, but the two are not the same. An employee can be satisfied with pay, colleagues and physical surroundings and still struggle, because the work lacks meaning or because the demands are not matched by influence.
Research often describes this through the relationship between demands and resources. High demands are not damaging in themselves. They become damaging when they are not accompanied by sufficient influence, support and clarity. This means a manager does not necessarily have to lower demands to improve wellbeing. Often it is a matter of raising resources.
Four places where leadership makes a difference
Clarity about expectations
Experienced influence
Recognition that lands
How difficulty is handled
Four places where leadership makes a difference
Leadership behaviour affects wellbeing in several ways, but four areas recur:
- Clarity about expectations
Ambiguity is one of the most widespread sources of strain. When an employee does not know what is expected, or when the work is good enough, energy goes into guessing. Setting expectations is therefore not administration, it is wellbeing work.
- Experienced influence
Employees who have influence over how a task is carried out cope markedly better with high demands than those who do not. Influence need not mean free choice, but it does mean being heard.
- Recognition that lands
Recognition works when it is specific and tied to something the employee actually did. General praise is easily experienced as obligatory and has little effect.
- How difficulty is handled
The way a manager handles mistakes, disagreement and bad news sets the norm for the whole team. This is where psychological safety is either built or undermined.
The same leadership does not work the same on everyone
Something often overlooked is that employees respond differently to identical leadership behaviour. An employee motivated by autonomy experiences close follow up as distrust. An employee motivated by security and structure experiences the same follow up as support.
This means uniform leadership is not the same as fair leadership. When everyone is managed identically, some are managed well and others poorly, without anyone necessarily understanding why.
In practice this comes down to knowing the differences. What gives energy to each individual, and what drains it? How does the employee respond under pressure? When is feedback helpful, and when is it experienced as criticism? It can be argued that this knowledge is one of the most underused leadership resources available.
The manager cannot remove everything
It would be an overstatement to claim wellbeing depends solely on the immediate manager. Workload, organisation, change processes and circumstances outside work all play a part, and much of that lies beyond the manager's control.
But the manager shapes how those conditions are experienced. Two departments under identical pressure can show very different levels of wellbeing, depending on whether people feel seen, informed and consulted.
A language for what otherwise goes unsaid
Wellbeing is built day to day, through the way expectations are set, disagreement is handled and difference is met. Structured insight into employees' drivers and response patterns makes that work easier, because it gives language to something that otherwise remains a matter of impressions.
If you would like a shared language for what drives your people, and how they should be led differently, we are happy to discuss what that could look like.