Why no one likes being a manager (and what to actually do about it)

I know you don’t really like being a manager, and if you’re an HR team, I know your managers don’t really like being managers. Now, how do I know? Because I was at a conference this week. I talked to maybe, I don’t know, five, 600 people, and every time I asked someone, Hey, are you a manager? They would reluctantly say yes. Ugh. And they’d kind of slump their shoulders and they’d look kind of disillusioned with it and say, yeah, unfortunately I am.

I know you don’t like being a manager because you told me. And that’s what I want to talk about on today’s show of why we don’t like being a manager and what we can do about it. Because I recently saw a stat from LinkedIn that said, I think only three outta 10 people are actually agreeing to be a manager anymore. I think we’re losing. We’re losing people that could be great at managing because nobody freaking wants to do it, and this is a problem.

Now if you’re listening to the show, you are already managing people or you’re responsible for managers in some way. Maybe you run a business, maybe you are a HR L and D leader, and maybe you’re a manager of managers, right? You’re one of those things. You have something to do with managing. So this reality that none of us really wanna do it because it kind of sucks. This is something we have to fix. I’m Leah Garvin, and this is the New Manager Playbook podcast, where I’m on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job.

I’m on a mission to help people actually like managing, because when we actually invest our energy and we get into it, and we do it, and we, we, we actually start to see that this thing isn’t so bad, right? When we get support and we get coaching and we get the resources to do it effectively. We find that this has the power to be the, the most fulfilling kind of work that we can do. But it certainly isn’t the case right now.

Certainly isn’t the case at the outset. Now, the irony that at this conference, so I said, I talked, I don’t know, 600 people or so, the folks that weren’t managers. They said, no, I’m not a manager yet, but hopefully someday they were hopeful about it. Some, some of that I actually wanted to, so you’ve got people that haven’t done it yet and think, okay, this could be cool. You’ve got people that are like, no way. Right?

The whatever, seven outta 10 that are saying no thanks. And then you have people that are already in the job thinking this is the worst thing. Right? Or I had other people that said, not anymore. Thank God. So we don’t wanna have any of those people, right? We want the hopefuls saying, yeah, I’m a manager and I’m loving it. I’m a manager and it’s hard, but it’s rewarding. I’m a manager and I feel like I’m supported by my company, by my own leadership chain.

I feel like I can do this effectively. Now, how do we get there? Well, first we gotta talk about why, why it sucks. And the truth is, I think between 60 and 70% of people take on the role of manager. Without any training at all. So you are a great individual contributor. You’ve been in the team for a long time, or a manager left and there’s a spot open and someone says, boom, you’re in that role.

Go ahead, figure it out now. Why would anybody feel good about being in a new role? That’s hard, that no one gave them any training, any support, and you’re actually having to figure it out and muscle through it with a whole audience of people. But you can’t figure it out quietly. You can’t just kind of start to trial and error because anything you do is at the expense of your team. So you’re on this public display of learning how to walk and when you’re falling down again and again and Yeah, like as an adult with, with, with self-consciousness and imposter feelings and all the things like nobody’s gonna wanna do that.

And I think we’re not remembering that piece. That when you are responsible for a team, most people feel that sense of responsibility. They want to do a good job, they wanna do right by their team, but the fact that they don’t know how to do that. That sucks. That’s the part that feels uncomfortable. And if you’re listening along, I’m, I’m hoping that maybe I kind of hit the nail on the head there of this thing that’s not being talked about.

That you are asked to put yourself out there and, and be coaching folks in wrestling with problems that maybe you haven’t had to before. And, you know, working through issues and load balancing and, and motivating folks when giving hard feedback. Talking about change when you don’t have all the answers. These things when. Nobody has taught you how to do it, and you have an audience. You are doing it in front of like people with bated breath, hoping you get it right for them.

Like of course that would be hard. So I, I wanna acknowledge that because I think we say, oh, folks start managing without any training, but we don’t really dig onto the surface and why that would feel so terrible. And I think especially when we become a manager of a larger team, we’ve got like 10, 15 people that are relying on us and they’re looking at us like, Aren, this person’s who they picked. You know? So even if our team member doesn’t think that there’s this whole cognitive load of wanting to get it right and, and not wanting to look stupid in front of our peers.

If you’re a business owner, you might have this feeling of, Hey, I’m the CEO, I’m the boss. I’m not supposed to be figuring this out. I, I should implicitly inherently be a good leader. That’s what a lot of my clients that are business owners come to me and say, Hey, I’m running this business. I’ve grown it to, to this great level of, of success, of revenue and profit. Like, I thought this leadership stuff would come naturally.

I thought it would be part of it. And they don’t realize, you don’t realize that it’s a skill you’ve gotta build. You feel like, ah, like why am I so bad at this? So there’s this letdown I think of realizing, it’s the knowing what you don’t know. When we start a situation and we don’t really know what we don’t know, and we think, okay, I can just figure this out as I go. There’s a little bit of ignorance as bliss, but when we start to feel like, gosh, I’m bad at this.

Nobody likes being bad at something, right? So that’s what’s fueling this feeling of, I don’t really like being a manager or, Ugh, this, this kind of sucks. Now another thing, let’s just call it obvious one, is it’s really hard to motivate folks in a climate of uncertainty and change, which is right now, which is every single day economic uncertainty, uncertainty with the future of a lot of kinds of roles. How are we making sense of AI and automation?

Are there gonna be layoffs? Are they gonna be restructuring managing during that? That is terrible. Even if you have every single trick tool strategy in the book, it’s hard. It’s really hard because we don’t have all the answers. And so every day have to sort of figure out, okay, like here’s our plan for now and here’s how I’m creating a sense disability and here are the knowns. This, that’s, that is, is putting us in a little bit of a heightened state.

Like that takes a lot. And so again, when you’ve had no training or skills around that or. Even if you do, it’s just like a really difficult time to be a manager and then the third, and, Hey, I felt this way, trust me. And when I asked folks at the conference, every single one said, it’s just like my, my team doesn’t really listen to me. It’s, it’s hard. I, I don’t know. I don’t know how to motivate them.

Then we don’t have the foundation. So do we really know how to give feedback? Do we really know how to set expectations? Are we really clear we’re we’re delegating? Right? This is where the skill gap really starts to break down because if we don’t have the foundational skills, because we’re part of the 60 to 70% that has had no training, so most of us then we ask our team members to do something. They kind of do it sort of, we try to delegate something, but we don’t really hand it off rights.

We’re still involved. Or we’re feeling ourselves really in the weeds. We didn’t have a big budget to hire, you know, so we got a part-time. It’s not enough coverage. Everybody’s kind of doing things. We, we have all these gaps because of other factors. A lot of it being our own, not really getting that foundational layer of training. And so the whole thing’s harder and our team members, they’re not really trusting us. Because we’re not doing the foundational things, we’re not setting the expectations clearly.

We’re not painting what success looks like. We’re not delegating to give them opportunities to really step up. As leaders, we’re in the weeds. They’re kind of like, uh, I don’t know. And, and so everybody’s just really not feeling so great. That’s the reality right now. And I wanna be clear with like managers, you, this is not your fault. This is the conditions that you are, are in. Like, this is the reality of it. It’s like now that we know that’s the reality, let’s do something about it.

So if you’re a l and D or an HR leader listening, Hey, the answer’s getting training, bringing in some training, obviously, you know, that’s what I do. Training managers through talks, workshops, my digital program, I book, you bring somebody in, bring a company in a person, whatever you have, internal resources. Start with something. Share the podcast because you’ve got to give your team members some support. The more you show that you are investing in them, the more they invest back.

If you’re a manager yourself, which I think most of us listening are, or a business owner who is a manager, right? If you have employees, then it is on you. It is not about waiting until your company provides a solution. I’m sorry, because when I was in corporate, I would’ve thought the same thing. I don’t wanna pay for a coach out of pocket. I don’t wanna take a class. I don’t even have time to read a book.

This is bs. Like I, I should be given this training during work hours. But we’re not always given that. And the worst thing is feeling hopeless, is feeling like I’m not good at this job, is bringing all that stress from the office back home to your family or your partner or your friends or whatever it is, because that stuff really weighs on us. More than half of man managers report feeling burned out. More managers are feeling burned out than ics.

The rate’s gonna keep going up because like we said, only three in 10 people are even wanting to be a manager right now. So the managers that are in the jobs are doing it with less support, with less peers to be relying on. So we cannot just sit and wait for somebody to give us support. I wish that we all got support. Trust me, I do. I am always advocating companies to be bringing in trainings to be, you know, whether it is small, a one day thing or a six months thing, whatever folks can do.

I am a huge advocate for companies doing that, believe me. Obviously I am, and I think it’s something we really have to take on for ourselves, and it’s making our own, Hey, what are the tools that I need to make sure that I’m showing up better so that I feel better about it? Because everybody at that conference, right, this was a leadership and development conference, so everybody there was trying to enrich themselves. Now, am I gonna say a lot of companies paid for them to show up?

Probably. But they showed up so they invested the time, which is awesome. And everybody there, I know because I met hundreds of people, was so passionate about being a good leader or a good employee, or they wouldn’t have been there. And so they came to my booth to talk to me about the new manager Playbook because they were interested and they bought a copy of the book, or they talked to Megan and I about the New Manager Playbook program because they were interested and they want to find that solution.

So I urge you to be like the incredible folks that I met at the conference that are out there, putting themselves out there looking for a solution. And again, it might be listening to a podcast like this, getting tips, tools, trying things out on your own, reading the new manager playbook, wrestling with, okay, I, I read about feedback now I’m gonna go try it. I’m gonna put some of the exercises that, and, and tools that Leah shared into place.

That’s fantastic. Getting a coach. Sometimes it does mean paying out of pocket. That can feel like an investment that doesn’t feel fair. I get it. But the thing is that on the other end of, of getting these skills, getting the support that your company didn’t necessarily provide to you on the other end of that, you kind of crossed this huge chasm of confidence. And then you’re on the other side realizing I actually do like being a manager.

Wow. My team member came to me and said, oh, this was so stressful. And when we had that one meeting and we really wrestled through that challenge and, and you know, you, you helped me figure it out. I’m so proud of myself now. I have had the most frustrating gut-wrenching situations as a manager and the most rewarding, and I wouldn’t trade the gut wrenching any day of the week because the rewarding people saying to me, gosh, I’ve, I’ve had so many bad managers, so many people that didn’t believe in me and saying to me, you were the best manager I’ve ever had.

When I felt like, God, am I doing it right? When I heard that or I heard folks saying, God, I, I, I feel like you really understand me and you really know how to bring out the best in me. I realized that it was because I kept trying, even though it was hard, even though I hated a lot of days, even though I didn’t get a lot of support. So that’s what we have to do. We, we do have to take it upon ourselves to get better at it.

Again, I will keep shouting from the rooftops to every company I talk to that we need to give our team support. And then it’s on us as managers, as leaders, and it’s certainly on us as business owners because nobody else is gonna pay for the support to be investing time and energy and dollars into training ourselves and to upleveling ourselves. Because if we’re not, we’re not only learning at the expense of our team, we’re gonna lose our good talent because good people always know their value.

And this is a little bit of a tangent, but I like to say it from time to time. Managers often ask me whether it’s in the corporate world, am I, am I, whether I’m advising a leader or in a workshop or training program. And then my work with business owners often ask, gosh, I have a high performer. Like, how did, how do I prevent high performers from leaving? Or someone just quit and they ask me, how did I see this coming?

And I say to them, high performers are always a flight risk. Go ahead and assume your high performer is always looking for another job. This doesn’t mean I know the person, we’ve had a conversation, but I know as a corporate high performer myself back in the day, that when you are good at a job, you know the weak links, you know when your manager’s not that good at it, you know when you have another opportunity out there and you’re probably getting solicited on LinkedIn by recruiters and other situations too.

You know your worth. So we have to remember our good employees always have options. It’s the lower performing employees that are sticking around, right holding on for dear life. So we we’re. We’re never surprised if a high performer leaves because they could be leaving any time. This doesn’t mean we are handcuffed to them or, or we’re taken hostage, but it’s, we understand that and so we work to do right by them. We work to also be a high performer.

We work to be a high performing leader. So that our high performing employees want to work with us. Okay? And now we’re getting into how to be a manager. People wanna work for a territory, which is my keynote, I’m bringing it to South by Southwest Sydney in a couple weeks. Um, well, we are a manager. People wanna work for when we invest in ourselves, when we actually build up the skills to be good at it, because that’s what attracts and keeps people.

So, I know I covered a lot of ground, but the biggest takeaway I wanna leave you with is. We’ve gotta show up whether or not we’re given the resources, whether or not we feel like we have time, because whether or not we asked to be a manager or we were just thrown into it, because once we’re in the role, we do have a responsibility to show up. So whatever it is, if it’s just listening to this show all the way to reaching out and getting training for your team or yourself individually, it’s on us.

To do it, to put in the effort because a little bit of effort. I’m telling you, it goes so far and I wanna go back to this conference next year. I wanna have my new manager Playbook booth, and I want folks to come up that I talked to. Maybe you’re listening to the show right now, and let me know what did you do to invest in yourself as a leader, and do you feel. And I guarantee you, every single one of you, when you invest a little bit of time in figuring out some of these things, okay, fine.

How do I have hard conversations? I’m gonna dig in head first. How do I deal with change? Because I’m not that comfortable with it myself. And you dig into these skills and you build confidence, you will enjoy it more. And you will not come up to me and say, Ugh, yeah, I’m a manager. You won’t do that ’cause you’ll actually like it. Okay? So that’s my challenge to you. Go get support. And hey, I would love to hear from you.

Let me know, right? I’ll be your accountability buddy. Reach out at [email protected] and say, Hey, this is what I’m doing to uplevel myself as a leader. And if you are a HR leader or l and d leader, say, Hey, this is what I’m doing to uplevel the managers in my company. And if you’re a business owner, what are you doing to uplevel yourself so that everybody is getting that support? This is my challenge to you, and I am here with you every step of the way.

See you next time.