The best bosses have one particular skill that elevates them above the rest, according to University of Chicago economist Virginia Minni.
Standout managers can spot their workers’ hidden talents and know how to best put them to use, making them more productive and helping them advance their careers, Minni wrote in a study published in September. “Gaining a good manager results in an improvement in worker performance,” she wrote, and those workers were more likely to be promoted and earn higher salaries in the long-run — 13% more than other workers, on average — according to the study.
Minni, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, studied 10 years of data from a single “large multinational firm” with 200,000 workers and 30,000 managers across offices in 100 countries. The study does not identify the name of the company.
The study identified the company’s most successful managers by looking at those who were promoted faster than their peers and received high marks in internal performance ratings, Minni wrote.
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