How Google Makes Managers Awesome | Michelle Donovan

Learn more about supporting managers here: https://rework.withgoogle.com/subjects/managers/

Managers matter a lot and can have a huge impact on employee performance. Support your people by sharing what makes a great manager, providing development opportunities, celebrating great managers, and more.

Google hasn’t always properly appreciated management. In 2002, Google ran an uncontrolled “experiment” by simply getting rid of all managers. It didn’t go well. So in 2008 a team of researchers set out to prove what some at Google suspected - that managers don’t matter. But very quickly the team discovered quite the opposite. Managers matter a lot.

The research effort, called Project Oxygen, pivoted to figure out exactly what makes for a great manager at Google. The guiding question shifted from “Do managers matter?” to “What if every Googler had an awesome manager?” Project Oxygen identified a set of common behaviors among the best managers and those behaviors now guide management development programs. The team has been able to show an overall improvement in management at Google by helping managers get better at coaching, empowering teams, managing team energy, staying results-oriented, communicating, developing teams, and sharing a vision.

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