How to Manage Managers

Managing managers is different from managing individual
contributors.

An individual contributor mainly produces work.

A manager produces conditions.

The manager’s work shows up through other people: clarity, rhythm,
priorities, standards, decisions, accountability, morale and delivery.
This makes managing managers more difficult, because the evidence is
often indirect.

You are no longer only asking whether a person is working hard.

You are asking whether their team is becoming more capable.

Start with the role

Many managers fail because the organisation never defines what
management is.

They are promoted because they were technically strong, commercially
sharp, reliable under pressure or politically visible. Then they are
expected to manage people as if management is merely common sense.

It is not.

The role of a manager must be made explicit.

A manager must translate strategy into work. They must set
priorities, allocate resources, remove obstacles, develop people, manage
performance, protect standards and communicate reality upward and
downward.

If this role is not clear, managers become either administrators or
heroes.

Administrators report on work without shaping it.

Heroes rescue everything personally and prevent the team from
maturing.

Neither is good management.

Manage the management system

When you manage managers, do not only manage personalities.

Manage the system in which those managers work.

Do they have clear objectives?

Do they know their decision rights?

Do they have enough authority for the accountability they carry?

Do they understand the operating rhythm of the business?

Do they know how performance will be measured?

Do they have the resources and support needed to deliver?

Many managers look weak because the management system is weak.
Ambiguity above them becomes confusion below them.

Inspect the quality of
clarity

One of the best tests of a manager is the clarity of their team.

Ask team members what matters most this month.

Ask what decisions are still open.

Ask what good work looks like.

Ask what is blocking progress.

Ask how they know whether they are succeeding.

If the answers are inconsistent, the manager may be busy, but they
are not creating enough clarity.

Management is not the volume of activity. It is the quality of
direction.

Coach judgement, not only
output

Managers need more than targets.

They need judgement.

They need to know when to escalate and when to decide. They need to
know when to protect a person and when to confront a pattern. They need
to know when a process should be followed and when the process is hiding
the real problem.

This judgement develops through coaching.

Do not only ask a manager what they did.

Ask why they chose that route.

Ask what alternatives they considered.

Ask what signal they noticed.

Ask what they would do differently next time.

The goal is to improve the quality of their thinking, because their
thinking becomes the team’s environment.

Do not bypass them casually

Senior leaders often damage managers by bypassing them.

Sometimes this is necessary. A crisis, an ethical issue or a major
customer problem may require direct intervention.

But casual bypassing creates confusion.

If team members learn that they can ignore their manager and escalate
every preference upward, the manager’s authority erodes. If senior
leaders constantly give instructions directly to the team, the manager
becomes a messenger instead of a leader.

When you need to intervene, make the logic clear.

Then return authority to the manager.

Hold managers
accountable for development

A manager is not only accountable for today’s output.

They are accountable for tomorrow’s capability.

This means they must develop people.

They must identify strengths, address gaps, give feedback, create
stretch, build successors and ensure that knowledge does not sit in one
fragile place.

A manager who delivers results by exhausting a few reliable people is
not building a strong team. They are consuming capacity.

Ask managers:

• Who is stronger because of your leadership?
• Who can now do work they could not do before?
• What capability is still too dependent on you?
• Who is ready for more responsibility?
• What behaviour have you tolerated for too long?

These questions move management from supervision to stewardship.

Create a cadence

Managers need a rhythm for running the business.

This should include regular one-on-ones, team meetings, performance
reviews, planning sessions, decision forums and retrospectives.

The rhythm should not become theatre.

Meetings exist to create clarity, decisions, alignment and learning.
If the rhythm does not improve the work, it must be changed.

When managing managers, inspect the cadence. A team without rhythm
becomes reactive. A team with too much rhythm becomes bureaucratic. A
good manager finds the minimum structure that keeps the work moving.

Model the standard

Managers copy what senior leaders tolerate.

If senior leaders avoid difficult conversations, managers will avoid
them. If senior leaders reward noise over results, managers will perform
noise. If senior leaders change priorities without explanation, managers
will pass confusion downward.

Managing managers therefore requires self-discipline.

You cannot ask managers to create clarity while you create chaos.

You cannot ask them to develop people while you only value short-term
output.

You cannot ask them to be accountable while you keep changing the
rules.

The management culture starts above the manager.

The real work

To manage managers is to build the people who build the
organisation.

It requires clear roles, strong systems, direct conversations,
coaching, accountability and respect for the manager’s authority.

The best managers do not simply get more work done.

They make better work possible.

Your task is to help them do that deliberately.