The real shame is that his boss didn't know how to manage him. Unfortunately, it's not unusual for middle managers to languish without decent coaching. I feel

The real shame is that his boss didn't know how to manage him. Unfortunately, it's not unusual for middle managers to languish without decent coaching. I feel like this often happens due to one or more of: a) the senior management chain was similarly not coached and so they wouldn't recognize a management failure if it bit them in the arse, b) the evaluation structures in place aren't suited to evaluating management types so bad management is "invisible" (e.g. skip level feedback), or c) there's an expectation that if you promote someone into management because they were a strong staff member at the line level, that they'll just automatically excel as a manager, too. I suspect there are a lot of bad managers out there that could've avoided their fate with early intervention...