From my experience you don’t need a manager to necessarily be an expert in their field, but it certainly does help. When a manager lacks the expertise then wha

From my experience you don’t need a manager to necessarily be an expert in their field, but it certainly does help. When a manager lacks the expertise then what it comes down to is how much a manager is, 1. Willing to work hard to gain the necessary knowledge to be effective in their job, 2. Listen to their subordinates on matters they are less knowledgeable about and displaying a deep interest in truly understanding it. What I have noticed is that if a non expert manager is not willing to do these two things what usually happens is they become yes men/women for upper management. They will agree to commitments that the team can’t necessarily meet (or in some cases will require them to work overtime), other times they will make the team cut corners or do things that are going to create a lot of problems down the road. When it comes to cleaning up the mess that was created, they have already moved onto to their next role leaving the clean up to their old reports and the next manager. A manager that is an expert in the field they work in can do just as much damage as a non expert manager when they micro manager everything leaving little opportunities for growth.