CCI’s editorial director, Jennifer L. Gaskin, looks back on her spotty history as a manager and wonders if conventional wisdom is all that wise.
People don’t quit jobs; they quit bosses. This is surely not the first time you’ve read or heard that, and maybe it’s something you believe deeply. Best I can tell, the phrase originated around 1999 in a book written by two Gallup researchers, “First, Break All the Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.”
Wherever the phrase was born, it’s long since become conventional wisdom, with everything from broad-based surveys to TikToks to LinkedIn posts all trying to reinforce this allegedly profound idea. And it’s not hard to see why it would catch on in a society where instead of broad, systemic changes to save the environment, we yell at people to recycle. Put in a business context: If turnover rates are high, making a change at manager is a hell of a lot easier than a roof-to-basement culture revolution.
Still, having a growth mindset means I take to heart research that says, for example, one in two people have left a job to get away from a manager, according to Gallup. I’ve managed many people in my career; did half of them quit because of me?
I started…
