Top 5 things managers want from employees

Once upon a time, a friend of mine started her career as a fresh graduate from a premier B-school. Enthusiasm was high, expectations were super high. She was the youngest in the team of seasoned professionals. After a week or month of induction, orientation, training, and shadowing she was set to embark on her corporate journey. In a couple of months, things set in. Targets, KRAs, processes, systems, policy… blah blah blah… every detail of the job routine was set and known. However, even after months of putting in tremendous effort, things were not right. There was a point when doing everything she could but that was not what the manager wanted. Every month despite huge overtime, zero absences, zero leaves things were significantly off. Something was missing, there was something that was not right at all.

Does it sound familiar to you? It is similar to a few stories that your friends had been bickering about on a call last evening? Is this something similar that you have gone through or currently going through in your career? 

The question is how would someone even know? Even when you know how to do your work still how would you know what the manager really really wants? 

Do not feel depressed. You are not the only one. I too had gone through a similar experience when I started my career but my transition from being a team member to a team manager helped me a lot to understand the gap. It is not rocket science but so close to us that we literally forget about it. When I overhauled teams this was among the most painful areas of an employee. People were literally giving up on their personal life to deliver what their manager wanted but still struggled to meet expectations. An employee can literally save hell a lot of time and emotion by acknowledging some simple things that a manager expects from an employee. Below is the list of things a manager wants from an employee:

1. Always remember the most important work

Never ever forget that your most important work is the one you are hired for. Never ever give up or delay the work you were hired for or you are currently positioned for. Just do a crosscheck and think how many times you missed things mentioned in your JD or KRA or KPI because you were assigned some ad-hoc work and you spent the majority of time doing ad-hoc instead of your core work.

1.a. The Important Work (Core Work)

Your JD, KRA, KPI, OKR explicitly state your important work. If you are in an individual contributor role then do not forget the Eisenhower urgent-important matrix. Always prepare a schedule for your core work with a contingency buffer, share it with your manager, and stick to the schedule. Never let yourself slack so much that your important (core work) becomes urgent.

The least expected by a manager is you do not become a pressure cooker handling your bare minimum work. So even if it is a 2-hour daily work that you can do at the end of the week, never procrastinate your core work. Do not create backlogs until unless explicitly asked by the manager. In case of such requests, make changes in your schedule and keep the manager updated. Also, keep note of things that would become your backlog for the next day. Stick to the routine to stay high on productivity and allow you to be agile for managing the next bucket of work. 

1.b. The Urgent Work (Non-Core)

Urgent ad-hoc work will always be assigned by the manager. It usually happens because someone, either inside or outside the company, didn’t schedule the important work. And on other times it happens because someone didn’t think it through or it was deliberately marked as not so important some time back. As said above, in case of such requests, make changes in your schedule and keep the manager updated. Even on such occasions finish your core work as per your schedule and then switch yourself to the urgent request. If you slacked on your core work then your manager will ask you to both, ad-hoc and core, as urgent work, and that my friend is the situation where you do not want to be in. 

1.c. Everything else comes next.

2. Your work is not a checklist; know your work inside-out

Doing your job is great but not knowing where you stand can be surprisingly embarrassing. Whenever the manager asks “How much will it take to complete?”, “What is the problem?”, “Why was it not done?”, employees usually try to bluff or tell ‘n’ number of issues (which in majority cases are symptoms). The manager expects their team members to not just come up with issues but also suggest practical solutions. To ensure you are the problem solver within your team you must follow the following points.

2.a Know the end user’s requirement(s)

A work completed in one go can do wonders to boost your productivity. Wherever possible, connect with the end-user of your task and have a conversation to understand what will be achieved by doing the task. For other cases, it is absolutely OK to ask your manager what is the end-goal of the task, how the end-product will be used.

Many employees are afraid to engage with colleagues on different levels and/or departments because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Few are concerned that they may offend someone, or sound stupid asking too many questions, or the manager won’t feel happy if they bypass them. Please do let these thoughts be your productivity hurdle. People like to feel appreciated and proud when they help others. If you simply thank them for their help you can make your way through any issues you are facing due to a lack of knowledge about the end-users requirement. Let your manager know then talk to the end-user. Your manager will be delighted for such an enthusiastic approach.

2.b Know (internal-external) inter-dependencies

It’s good to be self-aware about your commitments but it’s highly expected that you know about people and works around you. As a matter of fact it is comparatively easier to deliver an individual task. Hence it would account for low-time consuming work. You may spend the whole day finishing your individual task and your manager may still say work is not done. The only reason is the sole purpose of the task is not done yet.

For example, A report that was supposed to be used by senior management to make an important decision has been prepared and sent by you by mail but work is still not done as per your manager. Why? Because the decision is yet to be taken. The management team member may still be waiting for a nudge from your side before he checks his mail. This may seem so trivial but is quite often overlooked. Also, remember your work is not done till the end goal is met. You may have to spend most of the time waiting for tasks to be completed by others. And that’s okay as long as you understand about the nitty-gritty of the organization. Your understanding of a company’s structure, people, and steps of processes will help you to prepare yourself accordingly to the task at hand.

3. Periodically sync priorities with the manager

Many times employees keep on putting hours on tasks that were once marked as important/urgent by the manager. After some time may be days or weeks, the employee is still working on it with full dedication without being informed that it is not required anymore. Think how many times your manager has come to you and assigned you a new task and at the same time told you to scrap the last day/week/month’s super urgent work because it is not required anymore. This is a common workplace scenario. A Manager usually forgets about ad-hoc work assigned to their employees when they don’t keep a track of workload. As a preventive measure, employees should keep the ad-hoc tasks prioritized by the manager on a periodic basis. Your priority of work must match with the manager’s priorities. 

4. Proper communication is a must

We all take pride in a job done well. We spread the good news and celebrate achievements. However, when it comes to bad news, employees tend to delay or deny such communications. This is the most fatal error an employee can do working in a company. Organizations are built on learning from mistakes. Managers understand that people make mistakes. Even the best and the worst managers have reached that position after many number of mistakes and learning from those mistakes. But when an employee doesn’t communicate bad news in the first instance it is noticed, it makes the manager’s life tough.

Think of this as a fire accident, yourself as the person who started the fire, and your manager as the fire department. The sooner he comes to know about it the quicker he can quench it too without using a lot of extinguishers, fire-vans, firemen, and water supply. You are your manager’s front warrior and he will be held responsible for your mistakes whether you inform about a situation or not.

Do not feel afraid to accept mistakes but make sure you learn from them. Empower your manager through proper communication. It helps them to take corrective actions sooner than later. The sooner the better. In some cases, your manager may take no action at all as this was not critical in the overall scheme of things and he has some buffer for the internal issues at his end. So instead of spending hours or nights being anxious over something that is probably not a life or death mistake just be honest about your work. Trust your manager and strengthen it through proper communication.

5. Help your manager

Managers are under constant pressure to get more and more things done on an ongoing basis. They always have a bunch of not-important (ad-hoc) tasks at their level. This type of task is usually a long list that requires a disproportionate amount of time at their level. Help your manager by letting them delegate. The best team members are those who can help the manager to outperform.

In all such cases, a manager is more than willing to take help but to be in such a situation you must follow all the points mentioned above. The best thing that can happen is he will be more than happy to let you choose from a list of tasks to be done. Pick the ones that match your area of interest and long-term career prospects. This will prepare you for your role transition, give you a broader field of perspective for work done within the company, much more confidence, and build unmatched skill sets.

Conclusion

Everything mentioned in this article is from my personal experience. I’ve managed multiple teams, executed projects that required teams of all sizes to be highly productive and process to be streamlined for maximum throughput. I’ve restricted myself to keep this article to those points that would help an employee who is at the beginning of his/her career in delivering what a manager wants. I bet you must have figured out many more things by yourself already. Add those learning on top of this to become an outstanding employee within the organization. I hope it helps you in your journey.

Ohhh… by the way, coming back to the friend’s story. Well, it did turn around well. She improved significantly and proved her grit by being among the top 10% national performers in the company. 

Thanks for reading.