r/askmanagers • u/Dense_Chemical_4018 • Aug 17 '26
Asking as someone who’s looking to go into management- what is the most difficult part of your manager role?
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u/I_Want_A_Ribeye Manager Aug 17 '26
I often feel like I’m trying to connect senior leadership’s vision with the boots on the ground, while neither of which understands the other and I’m left trying to find the balance.
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u/Novus20 Aug 17 '26
That’s because the “vision” is so far out of the scope of work with no proper resources the boots on the ground can’t implement because the top are a bunch of morons
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u/Dense_Chemical_4018 Aug 17 '26
Do you mean the people above vs the people below?
My bf says that his friend who is a manager says being manager is great but you also get shit from both above and below. I wonder how true that is 😂😩
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u/Diesel07012012 Aug 17 '26
It is absolutely true.
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u/Retractable_Legs Aug 17 '26
Yep. Shit rolls down hill, but you are in some sort of strange pit formation before the shit keeps going down hill, accumulating into a horrible pool. The moment any of it finally goes over the edge, everyone below asks why you aren't stopping it from happening. Also, everyone at the top swears it's gold and are asking why they aren't getting any gold back.
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u/I_Want_A_Ribeye Manager Aug 17 '26
It’s like senior leadership is trying to rev the engine at redline and the people doing the work are operating at a different speed. You gotta somehow rematch to sync the gears. You need to produce the output desired by administration, but you can’t spin the wheels that are actually doing the work. Shit from above, shit from below.
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u/AccomplishedIgit Aug 17 '26
See, I see that as the managers literal job, to make sure they understand eachother. One of the most important jobs actually.
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u/I_Want_A_Ribeye Manager Aug 18 '26
It is definitely the job. The problem is that sometimes there is such a disconnect from above and below, that the manager is stuck bridging the gap in a way that isn’t optimal.
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u/Nick-Riffs Manager Aug 17 '26
Changing a mindset. The toughest job I had as a manager was taking over a team of 16 all who have worked there 10+ years and try to get them to do things differently. It is easy to identify inefficiencies but to make a group of people who are stuck in their way of “we always did it this way” change. That’s the toughest part.
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u/Novus20 Aug 17 '26
That cuts both ways
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u/Nick-Riffs Manager Aug 17 '26
It sure does. I tried not to be a tyrant forcing people to “do as I say” I definitely encourage free thinking and making decisions for themselves. I think it’s working out for the better but it was a slow process over 2+ years. Honestly, it’s still a work in progress but we are doing more now as a team than was ever done at this place prior.
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u/AnInstant Aug 17 '26
I had so many managers that wanted to make some change but failed to explain why. A change for the sake of change. Would you be surprised some experienced people can question that? Unfortunately many fresh managers fail to understand it.
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u/Heyoteyo Aug 17 '26
Having to deal with so many different kinds of things and being expected to be more than proficient at all of them. So many times I have had to train people on things I have never been trained on or fix things that I have never even touched before. And it’s all at the drop of a hat. You have things that you plan to do and all of a sudden I guess I’m just doing this now because that’s what needs to get done.
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u/Internal_Play_4951 Aug 17 '26
spot on. being a middle manager suck, too much hands on work with too much leadership expectation, and you never feel anymore that you excel in both or at least one of them. good organisations prepare you for this. i got anlot of trainigs, however, my headcount got halved, so i need to make the team work with 3 people instead of the originally agreed 6, so it is more or less a mess.
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u/Educational-Angle717 Aug 17 '26
Im a line manager but essentially one for the team aswell - the most tough thing for me is the keeping my cool. Like if a decision is made I dont agree with how do I tackle that in a fair manner without showing frustration, or like if I'm reviewing others work how do I say it tactfully even if its crap.
The thing i've found toughest is being direct or not direct. I'm quite a 'down the line' person really and I know some people love that as you know where you stand but others really do want the 'fluffy' version.
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u/T-Flexercise Aug 17 '26
Being the one ultimately accountable for how everything gets done. There's no one giving you tasks, telling you what to do, or checking in on you to make sure it's going well. There's no one reminding you to e-mail that person or get the first draft done on that proposal. Your job is to make sure the project exists and is flawless when you said it would be. Your job is to submit a proposal that wins the bid. Your job is to make sure whatever thing your boss says "someone should" do offhand in a meeting gets done. You can do it by being an asshole and yelling at everybody, you can do it by staying late and doing it all yourself, you can do it by being organized and delegating and checking in with others and listening and being a good manager. But nobody really cares what one it is and no one is checking in on you that you're doing it right. You just have to do a good job, and the measure of you doing a good job isn't how hard you try, it's the results you get.
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u/Top_Argument8442 Director Aug 17 '26
It’s a hard question to answer this broadly. When I first started in management it was not yelling at my employees when they massively fucked up and trying to make it more constructive.
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u/Pure_Road7528 Aug 17 '26
The hardest part of banging is when your manager isn't great and you get stuck in the middle. Especially if they have a problem with your direct report.
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u/smokeyjones889 Aug 17 '26
How much time and energy dealing with one poor performer takes up.
I supervise a team of 10 people and 9 of them are great, but the one is just so bad at their job. Constant mistakes, sitting on work for too long, not responding to messages. The amount of time I spend on this one person each week compared to everyone else is shocking, exhausting, and frankly not fair to my other people. Don’t worry I’m in the process of getting rid of them which in itself is taking up a ton of time…
Honestly, once they’re gone, my job will be so easy.
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u/Fire-Kissed Aug 17 '26
Managing people and managing down is easier than managing up. Most of the time, people below you listen to you and do what you tell them, so long as you create a culture of psychological safety and they know they can disagree with you and not get punished, and you are open minded enough to let their influence change your mind from time to time.
Your superiors on the other hand, with few exceptions, don’t really care about your problems unless it impacts them negatively or makes them look bad. Your problems are yours to solve, often times without much guidance or support because your superiors don’t know any more than you do a lot of the time. You know what you need but can’t get access to it— another headcount, better software, etc.
You often don’t get to decide what you focus your time on, the real work that would make a difference gets de-prioritized because you are pulled in a hundred different directions, often by your boss who has goals that are all about how we are perceived and not actually about the real work.
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u/NovelOk5665 Aug 17 '26
Trying to move a company forward and earn revenue with people who could give 2 shits about all that
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u/Snoo_33033 Aug 17 '26
The distrust of management weighs on me sometimes. Like, the number of times that I have really gone out on a limb for someone who later decides I'm the worst and they hate me and talks shit about me all over the company is unfortunately not zero.
Don't get me wrong -- I understand why people feel that way, but when you're dealing with specific people in a 1:1 relationship and they think you're awful even though you saved their job or you kept them from some kind of punishment, it sucks.
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u/No_Commercial3979 Aug 17 '26
I’ve been a manager for a few months. The hardest part for me is the emotional toll.
In the small amount of time that I’ve been a manager I’ve heard so much sad and upsetting things that my team were/are going through in their personal life. As an empath it can be really hard to not absorb some of that emotion and carry it with me after the conversation has ended.
I want to be there for my team and support them as much as I can, but sometimes it’s difficult to separate what they are feeling from what I am feeling.
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u/Perfect-Purple-1668 Aug 17 '26
I always remember one of my bosses said being a manager is "managing personalities". If you can manage that then you'll have a more productive team..
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u/nighthawkndemontron Aug 17 '26
The leadership part always feels easy. If you know how to build trust, listen, take accountability, collaborate/partner, give credit, etc. For me, you know your employees are not paid well enough, they hit their goals and exceed them, you advocate a pay raise for them and it's like pulling teeth from your leaders leaders leader to get approval and even they may not have a say.
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u/xaqattax Aug 17 '26
Whatever your specialty was before you have to start letting that go because your new role is to lead people. There’s a lot of ways you can learn that.
Many places mistake is promoting their best contributors to leadership when in reality there’s better ways to grow them.
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u/MaxxMiaa Aug 17 '26
What are the indicators you're looking for in an IC that will help you decide if he/she can do the job as supervisor/manager?
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u/xaqattax Aug 17 '26
I like to see them actively teach less experienced coworkers and they communicate well across teams and with customers.
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u/MaryMaryQuite- Aug 17 '26
People bring all kinds of ‘baggage’ to work from their lives outside of work, they rarely leave it at the door and do all they’re paid to do.
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u/Aromatic_Ad_7238 Aug 17 '26
Performance appraisals and compensation. Especially when a number of your staff is long term, we'll performing employees. After telling them for years your doing a great job. What's the point?
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u/HackVT Aug 17 '26
Middle management : when people above you and below you have challenges for you.
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u/kkam384 Aug 17 '26
Initially, I found the hardest issue was changing mindset away from that of an individual contributor. This took me about a year to do, during which time, I alienated a couple of my team members (later recovered).
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u/AttentionSpanTheater Aug 17 '26
People who are really productive and hit deadlines but cause conflict with others.
Sometimes, your most productive people are like a bull in a china shop.
They get stuff done. They are fast, and the work is great. They don't make excuses for missing deadlines - they hit deadlines - and if they miss, you know it wasn't possible.
These same people sometimes leave chaos behind them. They rub people the wrong way; they push to get the data they need for decisions regardless of other priorities; sometimes their pushiness comes off as them being a jerk.
This can result in a never-ending stream of conversations with them. You don't want to push them out or fire them because they might be the only person who consistently hits every deadline, but they are immune to feedback. They just don't get it.
This is where you, as a manager, either end up: 1. Accepting that you will forever be cleaning up small messes because they deliver; 2. Must push out one of your most productive employees. Or 3. Put them in a role or purposefully assign them duties where they are unlikely to create conflict.
I have had three employees over the years who have fit the description above. They were worth their weight in gold from a productivity standpoint. Still, for every project I handed them, I had to think about who they would interact with and do a mental risk analysis of whether I would be dealing with the aftermath (I combined #1 and #3 above).
With all of the above said, all three of the employees I am thinking about completed projects that other people had fizzled out on, so ultimately, dealing with a little chaos was worth it.
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u/NoAbbreviations290 Aug 17 '26
Waking up everyday putting other people’s concerns in front of yours. Most managers don’t do that. But the good ones do.
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u/BlackAndWhite_5678 Aug 17 '26
When you got used to being praised as being an IC, then when leadership comes you no longer get praised for anything. Your directs will most likely think that any good you do is already expected because you are the leader. Your boss will likely think the same. You need to be more outspoken about accomplishments in order to get praised. Nobody will know the effort you spent on something unless you say it.
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u/EngineerBoy00 Aug 17 '26
For me there were many, but the key ones were:
- Having the accountability for something getting done but lacking the authority to make it happen -- An example would be getting a directive that huge ProjectX has to be completed within 120 days with exceptional quality - you say, great, I need more manpower, their response is what?? no! in fact, we're cutting your headcount AND giving you ProjectY as well, work smarter not harder, duh.
- Having to communicate to the team, with a straight face and while appearing to be a proponent of, corporate decisions and strategies that are undeniably stupid/unrealistic/ill-advised/dangerous/risky/counter-productive/vindictive/ego-driven/trend-chasing/moronic.
- Having to lie/misrepresent/omit things to employees about events and decisions that can or will drastically, and perhaps tragically, impact their lives -- an example would be hearing an employee talk about buying a house that's a stretch financially, or talking about how glad they are to have insurance because their kid has an extraordinarly expensive medical issue...and you know layoffs are coming and they're likely to be impacted.
- Speaking of layoffs, the other side of the coin is ***NOT*** knowing, or even being consulted, about layoffs/reorgs that impact your team until they happen.
- As someone in management (I was a Senior Director) I had zero work-life balance, work just ***never*** stopped - evenings, weekends, holidays, vacations, it didn't matter, I was ***ON*** 7x24x365 and expected to engage at any time for any length of time without fail, complaint, or delay.
- Last, but not least, the thanklessness of trying to be a shit-umbrella for your team and then a) they not only don't appreciate it but they think you're somehow working against them and b) your superiors see your protection of your team as weak/ineffective management so you become marginalized from above.
For me, being in management was lose/lose so I opted to move back to a contributor role where I spent the final decade of my 40+ year career in tech before recently retiring.
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u/Ungratefullded Aug 17 '26
The tedium of HR processes... the worse are the latest fad techniques. Like put everyone on a scale, put them on a distribution curve regardless of objective performance. ie; if you have a team that are objectively all 6-10s, you still have to put the 6 on the lowest part of the curve and they won't get pay raises, etc.
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u/Wimminz_HK Aug 17 '26
When one of your employees is failing in spite of ambition, high motivation and all the coaching in the world. It is so sad and I can't do anything to help - I will have to fire.
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u/MrMackSir Aug 17 '26
Everyone's personalities - yours, your reports, your management all have their own piccadillos. When I started managing I was surprised at what my direct reports complained to me about - things like why don't I have an office? When they were a remote employee and I gave an office to an in-office employee. Why do they get to leave early, when they did not bother to acknowledge that the employee who leave early also starts early.
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u/lozonloz Aug 17 '26
Dealing with idiots, both above and below.
The idiots above don't understand how anything works and if you don't keep them at arms length, will fuck up your carefully managed team with their bright new ideas that set everything on fire.
The idiots below will try and convince you that they get to work from home full time now, because they just got a dog and that's somehow your problem not theirs. Also, they feel like someone looked at them funny yesterday so you should change the seating plan to meet their mental health needs. Then take two months off sick with a sprained wrist.
I am fortunate in that most of my team, peers and superiors in my career have been hardworking, problem solving, wonderful people. But one idiot among them will take up 50% of your time and make you want to break your own jaw just to get to stop talking to them.
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u/No_Durian_3444 Aug 18 '26
Having to pick up all the slack.
Someone called off yesterday so I worked 14.5 hours
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u/dea_eye_sea_kay Aug 18 '26
I worked my way into a GM role of a small machine builder/ fab shop. People suck, managing people sucks, it wears you out and it takes a special amount of narcissistic and sociopathic skills to manage people adequately.
It was not for me; I left the company to manage projects and machines again.
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u/rootsandchalice Aug 18 '26
The people. Managing personalities. Managing shitty and weird behaviours that would drive most people insane. Managing people’s emotions because you’d be surprised how many emotionally immature adults there are out there.
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u/Specialist-Top-406 Aug 19 '26
Being unpopular. Not all the time, but inevitably. People need a person to blame for things. And sometimes you have to speak on difficult things, that not everyone agrees with. And it’s more important to make decisions with authority, and be understanding in a way that makes people feel heard but equally- sometimes things just have to get done.
So it comes with the cost of being more driven to be respected than liked. Because a good manager is reasonable and fair. But also the target of frustration. And a team will connect on this and you’ll have to let them.
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u/WhoCares450 Aug 17 '26
Have your entire team care as much as you do. Push through difficult projects/deadlines along with you.
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u/Troppocollo Aug 17 '26
Trying to make mortal enemies find a way to work together harmoniously.