AIBU to say being a manager isn't all it's cracked up to be?

[manageyourexpectations]

Hi all
Posting for views from other people who have worked at managerial/senior level and may wish to share their thoughts or offer experience of stepping back.

I'll try and be brief with my scenario so it isn't too unwieldy! I am in my early 30s and despite not going to university I have worked my way up the career ladder in my sector quickly and am now working for a great company in a senior role.

The role itself is fine, but line managing staff is just becoming so tiresome. After 10 years of managing staff, dealing with all their problems and feeling responsible for their behaviour I feel like I really want to step back into a role where I don't have line management responsibility and go into something where I am responsible for my work only. I'm sick of coming home stressed and burnt out because of some kind of staff drama.

That said, I've been in a management position in some form or another for 10 years now and I'm not sure how I'd find the transition in reality.

Has anyone had any experience of stepping back in their role, and aside from the financial hit... what was the impact to you from this?

Thanks in advance

I hated people management, for all the reasons outlined many times over in this thread! Initially it's the pettiness and triviality of the complaints that people queue up to make, and trying to inspire lazy people to just do their job properly without making a fuss. Then it's the grief from above, and being ordered to distribute vicious emails about how shit the team is and how poorly they are performing, when you know that's going to make them retreat even further.

I thought I was a terrible manager, but a few of my team members said I was the best manager they'd had because I listened, protected them from the abuse of one particular director who had bullied them for years until I came along, and tried to make changes to benefit them. But I always felt I wasn't assertive enough, I just wanted people to be happy and motivated and hated having difficult conversations.

Anyway I got out by going into consultancy. Better pay, more autonomy, no trivial arguments to referee.

@Kirkman free fruit!’ I thought I was the only person in the world managing a free fruit issue. Fml there are two of them out there. My free fruit man is annoyed the company has taken away the weekly fruit due to abuse (by people like him) he thinks we have breached his human rights to fruit and is making a formal complaint.

I mange a team and the last year has been the most stressful year of my life. HR drama round every corner and it is distracted from our BAU work due to fighting, bullying accusations and general crying in the toilets over being asked to come to work on time. I’ve had enough. It has broken me and I have decided to take a side move to another role on a smaller team with one direct report who appears to be sane.

Yep, absolutely hated it and the extra money so wasn't worth the extra stress!

I quit and went self employed instead

Totally agree! I hated it. Did it for 13 years and then took a step back and went part time after having my children. Can’t see me ever going for promotions again.

You could be a manager like mine who has no interest in their staff, what they’re doing, what their job even entails. Gets away with it too. Really not cut out to be a manager. Paid very well for it too.

I do think it depends on the company you work for and the staff you get. I don’t cause any drama for my manager (not that they’d notice anyway!)

I moved, against my gut instinct to a more senior role in May, and dont enjoy it. The bulk of the time is spent sorting out other people's arguments or queries and I havent managed to make progress in any of the things I wanted to do because of paperwork and staff management. Its not worth the extra money...which you get taxed to death on anyway

I have moved sideways recently. Enjoyed management, I felt I grew a lot personally but it wasnt easy. People took the piss if you are soft and workplace is essentially adults playground.

I'm finding this really interesting as the next step up for me would involve managing people. I've had some awful line managers in the past and like to think I would avoid their worst mistakes and be ok in the role .

Are there any signs ahead of time that a team are difficult to manage (mine seem ok to me but I'm obviously not privy to everything!)

This thread has at least reassured me that I'm not alone in all of this!

@Badnessinthefolds I think it's difficult to answer your question about knowing as often the team can be relatively settled and one small change can upset the dynamic and suddenly people you thought were reasonable behave like unruly children!

However, a warning sign when I went for my current role was that nobody else in the business wanted it; despite the good money and the core job being fairly straightforward. People told me I was "brave" to be going for the job!

Others might disagree but a settled team where there's no movement in staff isn't necessarily a sign of a well functioning team. Often when you come in to manage a team like this you are challenging established ways of working that can be met with resistance and there may be arrangements in place that need to be queried and this won't go down well.

Examples: "Oh but Geoff always finishes on Monday at 2 to go play golf" or "As a team we are really open with each other, so if that means coming into the office and shouting at the other one to f*ck off after a difficult call, that's ok, we are just one big family".

I had a difficult team with little support from above. It was so hard and resulted in me leaving my job. I’m now doing consultancy work which has its own challenges but is much better.

@Kirkmanfree fruit!’ I thought I was the only person in the world managing a free fruit issue. Fml there are two of them out there. My free fruit man is annoyed the company has taken away the weekly fruit due to abuse (by people like him) he thinks we have breached his human rights to fruit and is making a formal complaint.

I wonder if it's the same person. That's something he would do.

Are there any signs ahead of time that a team are difficult to manage (mine seem ok to me but I'm obviously not privy to everything!)

Unfortunately, no. Mainly because you dont know what's are around the corner, who will join and how that changes a dynamic.

I always take time to step back and watch them interact with eachother, watch relationships and things. Rather than jump straight in with loads of management type stuff. It takes a while to get to know people. And how you know people as their manager, is different to how you know them when you arent their manager.

And yes, trying to change established (but unacceptable behaviour) is very very difficult in a long established team.

Honestly people management is something I took on to get to the next step, where I dont have any.

I hate it (so I specifically told my bosses I never want to do it). I was hired for my ability in a different area. You need specific skills to be a manager and I don’t have them. Some people thrive on it, but if you don’t then it’s awful.

A little bit different to you, since I was running my own, very small organization. I totally understand you though. Hiring people, managing them, and… Unfortunately firing them is a very unpleasant task. Some of them would get especially vindictive.

I am a very calm person, I'm not into drama, and it was very difficult.

I do agree that managing people is the hardest part of the job, and that it is, often, a thankless task.

I do actually like managing people - when they have a good work ethic and attitude, it's really rewarding and I enjoy being able to help people and see them progress.

But it can be so frustrating and draining managing difficult people. I have in the past had a large team with a number of 'difficult' characters, and it's not always easy to correct. And even with good staff, I don't really enjoy the 'school teacher' angle of things - having to say no to annual leave requests or WFH days that would leave the department understaffed or miss important dates. I do actually try to be very flexible and accommodating but I wish people would take a bit of responsibility for self policing these kind of things rather than making me be the bad guy.

In general I would agree that it tends to get easier (or it should do) as you progress to managing managers rather than junior staff. Theoretically, by dint of getting to a manager level, they should be relatively responsible and self sufficient - though that is not always the case! But as a leader of a department you're still responsible for collectively keeping the team happy, and I've found you tend to get blamed for company decisions.

So yes, it's very tough and the step up to manager is probably the steepest learning curve.

Are there any signs ahead of time that a team are difficult to manage (mine seem ok to me but I'm obviously not privy to everything!)

For me, the "warning signs" (that I ignored ) were the following:

Constant gossip.
Head office negativity.
The deputy manager and the store manager not getting along.

People are difficult to manage. Where I was, there was lots of negativity spilling down from head office and of course this made staff negative and pissed off themselves. It led to a fair bit of bitchiness (from men in their forties mostly!) and backstabbing - negative comments and just a lot of criticism from people who were quite happy to complain but wouldn't do anything to solve the problem!

I had a lot of people who all wanted different things and if one week I could please person A but not person B for some reason, person B would royally kick off. Then the next week when they got their way, they complained that person A was complaining about them!

Far too much drama and whinging for my liking. It was like dealing with hormonal teenagers! I switched to dogs and life is much less stressful

I worked my way up into Senior Manager position, and really disliked it. It wasn't that I was a bad manager (at least I don't think so!) but I always liked the more technical side of things as opposed to all the peopling side of things.

I'm another of those that went into consultancy and it's so different. I earn more (consultancy tends to pay fairly well) and work for a small consultancy so there is no formal structure - we work as teams on projects, with different people doing different roles depending on skills (I normally do all the technical stuff as that's my skill).

Is consulting an option for you OP?

I think a lot depends on the sort of workplace, but there will be different challenges. There's a difference between balancing shifts of people in catering vs techies in a large corporation, I think (as examples), but you can get brilliant people everywhere and also those you have thought of feeding into the shredder everywhere!

You're obviously doing it wrong... I have no idea how my manager got her post, she has zero people skills and is completely unapproachable. I'm sure if I died she wouldn't care 😂!

Agree, always wanted to be in a management and thought I was a people person but did not enjoy at all. Ended up being very stressed, coincided with some other life events that meant my mh took a toll and I left the job.

I however had no support from above and had very difficult team dynamics etc to deal with so it may have skewed my view. However I'm now at same level but in a purely technical role with no people management element and love it.

I see it like this:

Director/senior management level: pressure to deliver to team below, but none from above (except to board/investors). Lots of responsibility, but more freedom (and usually money!) if you make good hires in middle management, you're laughing.

Middle management: pressure from above and below. Lots of responsibility to your team, and responsibility to deliver to senior management level. Bugger all freedom, and money doesn't generally reflect the responsibility.

Non-management: Pressure from above, but usually a defined job description and as long as middle management is decent, you should be supported.

Have been in middle management and quite frankly, wouldn't do it again!

Laughing at the comment that as a director you have no pressure to deliver from above “except to board/investors” as if the board are merely a minor inconvenience

Laughing at the comment that as a director you have no pressure to deliver from above “except to board/investors” as if the board are merely a minor inconvenience 

Agreed. The various Business Unit Directors in my organisation have to report to the Exec Leadership Team and I know for a fact the Exec Director leading up our Unit (amongst a few other units) is extremely demanding and ruthless.

Very much not nice or easy being a manager. Bloody unpleasant and completely depressing working under a manager who has zero people skills and thinks getting angry and blaming everyone else is the way to inspire their team to work better. Make a thread about that someone.

Thank you @manageyourexpectations @kirkwood and@adeline, that's really interesting. This thread has genuinely given me food for thought!

That's why you get paid more.