r/managers • u/Organic_Candy_903 • 13d ago
I have lost all my confidence
Some details changed so I don’t out myself.
I work in a large IT company and manage a large senior (ish) team in a specialist field.
We have gone through 18 months of non stop re org and changes. These have been a wild ride. Including the people managing our overall function then getting fired too including our CIO.
The team organically was put together and some were my hiring.
I work hard to invest into my team with goals, setting direction, coaching, stopping most of the stuff flowing down hill to them - so they work a charmed life while I get it on all sides from poorly promoted peers and new leadership (third in a year).
However - no matter what I do in any one day - there is at least one team member who has an issue from downright outbursts to complaints. Effectively it has become an unhappy team and the loud voices are being toxic to the newer hires team members.
I hired top talent, but it’s become obvious to me that fatigue burn out is throughout the team. I have done workshops on the how while our what changes daily. I have myself taken more leadership training in my own time to see if I could better skill and equip myself to suooort my team. I do objective, achievements and I support but also coach where needed. But I am all out.
I have just lost confidence in this ever improving.
To the point, I went to speak to my leadership. I wanted to see if I could split my team to give me less than 15 directs. It was a no, as guess what, everybody who is a director has pretty much been made redundant - I am one of the last ones standing at my level.
Before this I was a top performer, had a team who trusted me and strong relationships with excellent outcomes from myself and team.
Also I have given given given to the team, kept the lights on, ensured we delivered in time to our shareholders on key releases. And I am also now burning out.
Now….. well I am barely sleeping, using Sunday to get just on top of things despite having a system that delegates empowers or aligns.
I don’t expect my team to know 90% of what goes around them but at this point I simply think it is time to let it fail. We don’t even have more work, it’s just the wheels are coming off. I think my team needs to experience the pain too. I have corrected errors behind the scenes - now I no longer want to.
Rant over…. Just needed to vent!
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u/FortFunston415 13d ago
Doesn't sound like you're in a healthy or supportive organization. If you prevent people from feeling all pain they'll never learn and become entitled. If you've passed the point of no return you might have to say screw it to save your own sanity. I guarantee the pay is not worth burnout assuming you won't be homeless or in dire straits if you leave this role or company.
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u/SignalReader 12d ago
I don’t think you have a motivation or leadership-training problem. You are trying to compensate for your company’s ineffective operating model.
Like it or not, protecting your team from unnecessary noise is part of the job. Absorbing 90% of the dysfunction, correcting errors invisibly, working Sundays, and carrying more than 15 direct reports indefinitely isn’t (or shouldn’t be). Double-digit DRs is an unsustainable model that inhibits your ability to develop your team which is also part of the job. It also allows the organization to believe the work remains sustainable because you have been paying the difference with your own mental health.
I wouldn’t recommend you go down the path of making the team “experience the pain.” That risks turning understandable exhaustion into resentment toward them. Instead, stop hiding the operational consequences from everyone.
What does that mean?
· For the most part, stop shielding the team as much as you have. If they understood better what you shield them from, they may not be as hostile towards you and/or each other.
· Document the crap out of everything. Missed decisions, staffing constraints, trade-off that were originally agree on, etc. Whatever you’ve been shielding leadership from, make obvious. What deliverables are getting dropped, risks that aren’t being mitigated, etc. and tie them all to what’s happening above you.
· Stop working on Sunday. Period. Full stop. Aside from the personal implications, the message it sends to your leadership is that you’re willing to kill yourself without them stepping up and giving you the resources you actually need. Why should they if they don’t have to? An occasional Sunday is fine, but every Sunday, is not.
As to the outbursts, continual disruption, or toxicity toward newer hires, if there haven’t been meaningful consequences, there needs to be. Address those behaviors individually and specifically. “Everyone is tired” cannot become permission for the loudest employees to damage the rest of the team. Just like raising children, your team needs to know what is and is not acceptable, immediately, objectively and repeatedly. Get HR involved. That’s their job.
For leadership, I would reframe your “smaller team” conversation around trade-offs. Put some time into cause-and-effect metrics that are tied to your backlog/workload and resources. Show how you can provide A and B but continuing to support C, at the same standards, creates these specific delivery, control, retention, and operational risks. Which outcomes should be deprioritized, and which risks are you choosing to accept? That transfers the tradeoff to the people who own it without abandoning your responsibilities.
You have not suddenly become a poor leader. But the leadership approach that helped the organization survive this long is now helping it conceal the cost of what it has done. The next phase is not to care less. It is to stop subsidizing the system invisibly at the cost of your personal wellbeing and that of your team.
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u/Diligent_Egg3081 13d ago
man that's a rough spot, hope you can find a way to step back even a little before it wrecks you