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Why all new managers want to quit

Andy Walker
6 min readNov 9, 2021

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The first big inflection point of management and how to handle it

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

Over the years I’ve had a lot of coaching conversations with managers. Whether they be managers I’ve appointed, managers I’ve been coaching, managers I’ve trained or managers I’ve inherited. One of the common themes running through these conversations among managers who had been in the role less than 18 months was they all told me the same thing.

“I don’t want to be a manager any more”

This happened at earlier or later stages depending upon the person but was a near universal reaction to discovering that managing humans is not a happy fluffy bunny land with cotton candy and unicorns. I say near universal because there are a tiny number of people who don’t say this and they fall into one of three categories:

  1. Sociopaths who are getting a kick out of telling people what to do. It’s important to identify if this is the case because this is a near future (or even present) problem waiting to happen.
  2. People who were afraid to speak up because it would mean admitting failing. Initially it may be hard to separate these from the sociopaths who you shouldn’t have made a manager in the first place. Skip level meetings may help identify this or direct coaching. If there’s low psychological safety with your managers then this group can be large.
  3. People with an incredibly high EQ (Emotional Quotient) that have an intuitive grasp about people. These rarest of rare people are to be cherished and nurtured.

I got to the point where I would burst out laughing when the manager told me this. Perhaps not the best reaction to someone baring their soul. Then, I went further and would have the “talk” with new managers to preempt the soul searching conversation. After all why wait until people feel at breaking point. It also allowed me to explore whether people were likely to fall into the category above.

The talk started with being open that sometime in the next year to eighteen months I expect them to come and tell me they don’t want to be a manager any more. This was not the warm vote of confidence that people were initially expecting so it was important for me to say why.

  • All new managers go through the same struggles

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Andy Walker
Andy Walker

Written by Andy Walker

Interested in solving complex problems without complexity and self sustaining self improving organisations.

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