Why Are There So Few Good Managers?
With my students, we often discuss what makes a good or bad manager. I’ve noted down 20 of the least obvious factors — of course, very briefly. Save, use, and send to others who are on this path.
So.
No Initiation. People become managers suddenly. Yesterday’s top specialist advances in their career. A bizdev becomes a managing director. A brand manager becomes a marketing director. Domain knowledge is no longer sufficient. Direct people management and responsibility for the business or part of it appear. No one prepares for this. Moreover, the new manager doesn’t feel they’ve “earned” it; the team doesn’t understand why this person. The chances of catching imposter syndrome increase wildly. Initiation can last for months, including complex initiatives and group challenges. Essentially, it’s a ritual of transformation, after which neither the candidate nor the tribe has any questions regarding legitimacy.
Lack of Mentoring. As in fairy tales and myths, every hero should have a magical helper. When they don’t, the hero ends up alone in another world, a dungeon, facing trials all by themselves. Unnecessary traumas, wasted time, lack of cultural continuity.
Unwillingness to Say Goodbye to the Past. Any transformation is a symbolic death of your former self. The ego clings to its existence and desires to remain unchanged. The identity of a strong specialist is a load-bearing structure for many of us. We have worked hard and proven that we have the skill and experience. A quality transition into people management (and further into an executive position) requires letting go of this. If you do your previous job, you skip your current responsibilities. And there’s nobody to cover for you.
Fear of Exposure. Shame that you’re “doing nothing” equals the inability to perform previous duties (correctly) plus the inability to work in the new role (incorrectly). If a person slides back into working in their previous role, they’re not doing their new job. This means that no one is doing it. This results in a vacuum in the system, processes, culture, narratives. It means a team without support and clarity.
Fear of Deep Space. Suddenly, no one tells you what to do. You “invent work” for yourself. Good leaders have long since successfully dealt with this, even in specialist positions and as starting leads or heads. But there are those for whom it’s harder, and that’s okay. If there’s no drive, clarity, and vision inside, it will be difficult. The impulse now comes from you. Fear of the vacuum and unwillingness to part with the past lead to regression into previous activities and attempts to take work from team members or to micromanage all aspects.
Nanomanagement. A rigidly fixed specialist identity plus distrust of the team plus fear of losing control. We steal experience from the team. We don’t give them space for their own mistakes. We don’t delegate; we don’t relinquish power. Closely related to the previous point.
Fear of Becoming Unnecessary. I would say, the most fundamental barrier, overcoming which makes many things work automatically. It’s worth entering a team and organization with the mindset to build such a system and culture (and team!) where you become unnecessary. Scary? Perhaps. Effective? Definitely! It unlocks hiring strong people, delegation, transparency, and access to all business metrics, clarity and understanding of why we are all here, an adult position instead of “I am your mommy/daddy.”
Misunderstanding the Architecture of Culture. It’s simple — we are not taught this, which is why I actually launched AML (Anthropology Management and Leadership) a few years ago, where we give a chance to close this gap and become a better manager (and earn more, of course).
Inability to Manage Your Energy and States. Leads to burnout of yourself and those around you. In cases where your leader is a psychopath or malignant narcissist, the only advice is: run, baby, run. Life is more valuable than illusory hopes for magical changes. In all other cases — we learn energy management; it will be needed for long-term marathons.
Self-Sacrifice (Fake). Pseudo-service, when I work more than everyone, burn more than everyone, worry more than everyone, get sick more than everyone. A total misunderstanding that the main instrument of a manager is themselves. People read states. People read the ability to manage energy. They take example. Words mean less than behavior. Who needs a martyr among a zombie team? Also, the “victim” can be a well-disguised narcissist who draws attention to themselves. Look at me; I suffer and sacrifice my life better than anyone.
Lack of Personal Meaning. Not understanding your path. On one hand, connected with burnout — people burn out not because of a large amount of work but because of the lack of meaning. Proven and demonstrated. On the other hand — often two opposite effects with one cause. First — growing into the organization and inability to dissociate, thus psychodynamics instead of an existential journey. Second — changing scenery and dragging all the same problems to a new workplace (you can’t run away from yourself).
Inability to Harmonize Meanings and Narratives: Personal, Team, and Organizational. The manager, team, and organization seem to be in different worlds. Daily activities are disconnected from the leader’s values (and don’t give them energy = apathy, frustration, burnout). The team “goes to work” and perceives company-level messages as signals from space full of absurdity and riddles. The company doesn’t understand how to reach people and loses contact, increasingly sliding into treating them as “human resources,” on par with office equipment. Ouch.
Fear of the Team. What if I ask them “How are you doing?” and they start answering? And what will I do with what they tell me? This includes the absence of one-on-one meetings or one-on-ones turned into reporting or task distribution (we talk a lot so as not to suddenly find ourselves in silence opposite another living person).
Misunderstanding the Role of Narratives and Myth-Making. This includes also rituals. The leader doesn’t provide clarity, doesn’t provide a story, doesn’t work on structuring the tribe’s experience. Accordingly — weak identity, lack of clarity, lack of team cohesion.
People vs. Team. Not understanding how to work with the team as a whole tribe. We weren’t taught to work with a third entity unless you’ve undergone special expensive training. Leads to rationing information, attempts to engage in manipulative communications with each individually — an illusion of control. Also, heaven forbid, the “divide and conquer” mode, setting team members against each other and artificial competition. Oh, good luck.
Inability to Detach Your Life from Your Professional Identity. If your entire ego structure and meanings lie in the professional plane, it’s no wonder there’s so much fear and fixation. Here, work on yourself, therapy, and coaching are needed. But also hobbies, serious engagement in sports, pet projects. Those things that will strengthen self-identity and expand the set of supports. Also returning to the point about personal meanings and history — why am I here in this world? Where am I going? What am I besides a signature in a work email? Scary, but sooner or later you’ll have to deal with it. Better sooner.
Enchantment with Power. “To kill the dragon and become the dragon.” This is one of the more subtle aspects. Often, good leaders come forward to make the world better. In the process, they acquire the necessary power and influence for this. And they get stuck in it. On the hero’s journey, this stage is called “refusal of the return.” The hero has experienced the battle with the dragon but couldn’t integrate the new knowledge and skills into their core identity, harmonize power with mission, influence with nurturing the next leaders.
Inability to Make Decisions. Endless meetings and impotent working groups. Attempts to dilute responsibility. Sometimes even masked as a “coaching” style of management. Decision-making is a key duty of a manager and executive. Understanding where to give space to the team and where the team needs leadership and to be led — is crucial.
Belief in Magical Powers. Frameworks, abbreviations, trainings. Borrow practices from a book. Invite a renowned business trainer or consulting company. Magical thinking and the search for an artifact that will solve all problems by itself and from which a happy team full of meaning and overachieved KPIs will be born. Most likely, at best, you’ll get “oh, we have a free day off” and a bunch of very expensive slides. Magic is cool, but it won’t replace the quality and activity of the leader (sorry).
Unwillingness to Accept the Leadership Costs. Leadership has its price — loneliness, responsibility, confrontation with the absurdity and chaos of the world (which the leader must organize for the tribe), the weight of decisions made. Not understanding that this is part of the package leads to unnecessary melancholy or even depression. Often, this coincides with a midlife crisis.
Mechanical Understanding of Management. Management has its history, and the shadow of this history is still with us. People as appendages to the conveyor belt (business process, value creation, etc.). No matter how you wrap it in nice words (“talent management,” hello), in the absence of understanding, there will be constant staff turnover and salary competition. The alternative is working with culture and anthropological management with a human face, conscious mature leadership. Doesn’t cancel out hard skills, of course.
Unpreparedness. Lack of skills and experience at 2nd or 3rd levels of culture. Poor project and time management. Lack of knowledge of tools. Absence of a strong specialist identity (yes, then paradoxically you’ll have to part with it, but it’s a necessary stage of evolution). Basic skills must be at the level of automatism — at the level of management and team leadership, there will be no time to learn how to manage your calendar and quickly create slides. It’s very banal, but often this is also the case. A person wants to be a “director” of anything or a director. And becomes a mediocre director of nothing. Another bad manager. Don’t rush! Enjoy freedom, less responsibility, and youth. Hone your skills.
Not Everyone Needs to Be Managers. Just as not everyone is suited to an office or corporate context or consulting or… well, you get it. Unique specialists with cool hard skills, the ability to mentor youth, deep domain knowledge can earn very well and feel fulfilled (and even support their leader in some aspects). Not everyone and not at every stage of life is capable of being a manager (and being happy at the same time).
But if it really burns and you can’t do otherwise — then of course there’s no other way. A leader is the one who needs it more than anyone else. You already show initiative. Poor-quality work annoys you. You feel empathy for the team and want to make their lives better and more productive. You can’t stand unsolved puzzles and complex problems — that’s what drives you. You calmly accept if not all laurels go to you personally. You like to feel the power of words (communication). Autonomy doesn’t scare you, and the wind of freedom excites you. You like to build complex systems and enjoy observing their functioning. Welcome to leadership roles.
It’s tough here, but very interesting.
