Half Truth – People Don’t Leave Companies, They Leave Managers

Manager is just another employee. Manager is also reporting to his/her manager. Manager is not the owner of that organization. When people say, “they don’t leave companies, they leave managers”, they are saying only half the truth. Or more possibly, they can realize only half the truth.

Recently in one of the meetings (where I was also present), a gentleman from some foreign country said, “Indians have a tendency to move very fast. They don’t stay in a company for long. They stay for maximum two to three years.”

To this, another member who was an Indian, agreed and quickly commented, “When I was interviewed, I was asked how you managed to stay for 5 years in one company”. Isn’t this an example of half truth? But this is how quickly people adopt the thoughts of others.

People like to frame the sentence as per their liking but the facts remain the same. Words can be articulated but the facts do not change. This statement, “People don’t leave companies, they leave managers”, is also an articulated statement I believe and most people accept it because most people have managers (no matter how senior they are).

Actually, in most (not all) cases people leave companies and manager just gets the blame.

In some cases however; manager can be a poor leader which could lead to poor relationship with the team members. Some managers focus on unnecessary things while some managers want to establish their dominance.

One of the managers I know wanted his employees to sit in the office until 7:00 pm for no reason. You have the work or not, you have to sit till 7:00 pm. Office hours however; were only up until 5:30 pm.

I asked him why he wanted his team members to unnecessarily show their presence in office. He told me, “Our department has low work pressure and the other departments are working under great pressure. I am just trying to show off that we are also sitting late so that no unwanted work comes in.”

Had I not asked him, I would not have got his justification. Whether he was wrong or right is up to you to decide but the managers behavior actually comes from somewhere. That somewhere is (most of the times) based on company policies.

If the company decides on cost cutting, manager is forced to ask his employees on cost related matters. If the company policies are such that employees should avoid taking leaves as much as possible, you could notice that in the manager’s behavior.

Also, if I am not wrong (and any manager category people reading this article might want to correct me) a manager is often blamed by his employees for not giving promotion in time however; it is actually not the decision of the manager alone.

A promotion can be delayed if a reporting manager wants to but if he wants to grant promotion to someone in his team he would have to consider several features with his/her reporting manager which include things that are mostly company (and not manager) related i.e. budget of the department, experience vs. level compatibility, effect of promotion on team as a whole, etc.  

It is very smart to say that people quit their managers and not companies; however, the reasons if you analyze would fall mostly on the company’s part, for e.g. poor infrastructure, lack of basic facilities (such as lack of proper work space, conference room, phone on the desk, etc.), lack of decision making, over travel, lot of security restrictions, working hours, office/factory location etc.

Manager is there just to ensure what the company policies read. He is not the one to be blamed in my opinion for a job change (in most cases).

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