A Comprehensive Guide to Empowering and Supporting Managers in Modern Work Environments
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Building great managers is one of the hardest challenges organizations face today. From AI to layoffs to hybrid work environments, managers are tasked with helping their team navigate more complexity than ever, and with fewer resources.
At the root of it, every management challenge is about getting a team to work better together. The challenge often starts in one of three layers of the organizational system: the employees, the manager, or the culture. There are concrete ways to build better teams at any of these layers, but it starts with making the right diagnosis. Only then can you influence change or support growth effectively.
After hundreds of hours of coaching managers and their teams, we’ve identified the top four challenges that managers face and how to support them through it. Let’s break down each of the four challenges into the three layers of the organizational system.
You’ve probably heard this from your managers before. It's not that managers don't know that they should let their team do the work. It's that they have an internal narrative that bad things are going to happen if they don’t do it. They're thinking...
😓 "It'll be done poorly."
😬 "I will be held accountable if it's bad."
😳 "If I don't help, people won't think I work hard."
So how do you address it? That depends on where the problem is rooted in the system. Our system framework breaks down the problem to the employee, the manager, and the culture level. The issue could be an employee not being prepared to rise to the task, the manager leaning too much on their IC skills and needing support to develop competence and confidence in their management skills, or the organization culture being one where mistakes are not ok.
Wherever the problem arises from, there are tactics to support. If an employee is not prepared to own a task, investing in relevant training or temporarily increasing the frequency of 1:1s with their manager will be time consuming in the short run, but help them build the necessary skills in the long run. If the manager is not comfortable in their managerial skills, investing in a management coach can help them build the confidence and skills to lead more effectively and get better results from their team overall. If the organization has a culture of not permitting mistakes, the culture could be shifted by implementing a postmortem process. By sharing mistakes as part of the post-project debrief and celebrating the learnings from them, it normalizes making mistakes and doing things differently as part of growth.
New managers often feel like they’re juggling too much at once. They’re thinking...
😓 "I have too many priorities."
😬 "Everyone is busy so no one can help me."
😳 "I'm overwhelmed by how much I have to do."
This challenge can be broken down to the employee, the manager, and the culture level. The issue could be the employee is not equipped with the skills to take the load off a manager’s plate, the manager not being rigorous about delegating, or the organization lacking clarity about its priorities.
At each level, there are solutions. An employee can be trained to take on some of the lower hanging fruit tasks that the manager can delegate. The manager can refine their skills in delegating through training or coaching. The leadership can work with an executive coach to identify their biggest goals and get selective about the top priorities for the organization to give the team a clearer roadmap. These are not overnight solutions, but identifying the right problem is half the battle.
Sometimes managers just can't shake the feeling that their team hates them. Usually this thought isn't rooted in truth, so where does it come from? Our brains are experts at filling in the gaps when things are left unsaid, especially when there’s some amount of insecurity at play. Some thoughts arise like...
😬 "Am I doing a bad job?"
😓 "I have no idea what I'm doing."
😳 "They used to be my peers and this is awkward."
A system breakdown to the employee, manager, and culture level of this problem is helpful. The employees reporting to a new manager could be having trouble adjusting, the manager might not be spending enough time in 1:1s building trust, or the organization might have a culture where people don’t give each other feedback.
Once you identify the root cause, these challenges can be addressed at each level. To help employees adjust to the change, leadership may need to get involved in announcing the change in a way that addresses the values and acknowledges the fears that a team might have about new management. Managers who haven’t built enough trust with their team would benefit from a 1:1 structure that builds in time for connecting with their employees on a personal level. Finally, any change to culture requires patience, but building a culture of feedback starts at the leadership level. Make sure that leaders are asking for feedback regularly to model to others that feedback is valued. It might be worth doing a full team training on feedback as well.
Sometimes managers feel like they’re talking into the void. Feeling unheard is never a good feeling, but especially when it magnifies into beliefs like...
😬 "I feel like an imposter."
😓 "They're going to do whatever they want anyway."
😳 "They're more senior and don't respect me."
Addressing this lack of control or imposter feeling starts with identifying the root of the issue and which layer of the system it exists on. Employees could be having trouble adjusting to a new manager, the manager might not be communicating effectively, or the organization may need to more actively support leaders of all backgrounds.
In the face of these challenges, you have a few options to address the problem. Similar to the last scenario, how a management change is announced can play a big role in setting up a new manager for success. Leadership taking an active role in announcing support and confidence in a manager to their team goes a long way. Managers who struggle with communication may just need a few pointers to tighten up their language, or may require a deeper engagement with a communication coach to help them build the muscle of communicating clearly and concisely. Finally, building a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion is an ongoing process, especially with each new leader put in place. Feeling safe, trusted, and heard is critical for every manager to bring their best to work, and it is important to intentionally build a culture of inclusion, especially alongside a DEI coach.
The most important thing you can do for your managers is create a space for them to be vulnerable about what they’re struggling with. A manager will always have a need for unpacking how to motivate an employee or how to navigate a tricky decision. At Tandem, we’ve seen time and time again the value of coaching as a safe container for vulnerability and growth.
Whether that’s putting the internal coach hat on yourself or finding an external coach for your employees through a coaching platform like Tandem, supporting leaders with a space to share vulnerably is crucial.
We published a free downloadable guide to help people leaders play the coaching role internally and understand what to do about various new manager challenges.The full guide breaks down these common manager challenges, and provides 20+ pages of frameworks and templates to support manager growth. Download the full guide for free here: https://www.trytandem.com/leader-decoder
