Managing is a Job. Let’s Start Treating it Like One.
Everywhere you look, organizations are struggling with burnout, low morale, high turnover, and toxic work cultures. While these issues are often blamed on external stressors or “bad apples”, there’s a deeper, more systemic problem: we don’t understand what it means to manage.
Instead of treating management as a skill to be learned, we treat it as a reward for high performance. We promote our strongest individual contributors into leadership roles and then wonder why things fall apart.
I’m not saying that high performers can’t learn to be effective managers. I’m stressing the fact that managing is a skill, and just like any other skill, it must be learned. Just because someone is excellent at their job doesn't mean they’ll be excellent at managing other people doing that job.
In fact, the very traits that make someone a standout individual contributor can interfere with good management. It’s an entirely different skill set. High performers are often task-driven and self-reliant. Some struggle with delegation, and many lack the emotional intelligence and communication skills needed to guide and support teams.
We don’t expect a brilliant engineer to be a great teacher. So why do we expect great workers to be great managers without training?
Management isn’t an innate gift. It’s a skill—like design, writing, or analysis—that can (and must) be developed. Yet most organizations skip this step.
So, it’s no surprise that many managers struggle with key responsibilities like delegating, giving feedback, advocating for their teams, resolving conflicts, and developing their team’s potential. Many also aren’t given the space or support to reflect on their own leadership style and develop greater self-awareness around their own gaps and growth areas.
We wouldn’t hand someone a scalpel and expect them to perform surgery without proper training. So why do we routinely hand new managers a team and hope for the best?
Until we shift our mindset from “rewarding” top performers to intentionally developing leaders, we’ll keep repeating the same mistakes.
What if we:
Started identifying leadership potential early, based on curiosity, emotional intelligence, and communication
Created separate growth tracks for contributors and managers
Invested in training, coaching, and reflective practice for new managers
Managing isn’t just a step up from doing. It’s a different role with different demands. When we ignore that, we set people and organizations up to fail.
The truth is, many of the issues plaguing today’s organizations can be traced back to this very misunderstanding. It’s time we give management the respect (and support) it deserves.
