The 2 arguments made here are that managers are not trained, and they land on the role more or less by chance. Yeah to both! But that being said it's pretty h

The 2 arguments made here are that managers are not trained, and they land on the role more or less by chance. Yeah to both! But that being said it's pretty hard to judge what makes a good manager because we already can't agree on what the role of manager is. I think there's a somewhat systemic issue here that people have very conflicting expectations - managees want a) someone that helps them advance in their career, protect them, and create some clarity. Manager's managers want b) someone that get shit delivered, adheres to internal bureaucracy, and if possible creates _some_ retention. Corporate training will be mostly about a), while being limited because training is expensive. There's also a widely spread culture of self-inflicted expectation that managers should be omnipotent, and therefore shouldn't ask for help if they're doing their job properly. How many times did you have to personally sacrifice because your boss wouldn't dare to ask their boss for a few days delay? And at the same time if that's celebrated as "being tough" or "getting shit done", anf that's the kind of stuff that gets managers promoted. It's a self reinforcing loop. It's corporate natural selection. And that's the stuff that management schools will teach you about, given that it's what makes you successful. The b) side being more important to managees than company, it's less taught in a corporate setting - and therefore requires self directed training. It requires empathy, and an actual interest in the role itself, not the power it yields. You rarely encounter managers with well developed skills on that side, most just have whatever intuitive skills they acquired by themselves