Why You Feel Overwhelmed As A Manager
If you feel overwhelmed as a manager, you probably already have the diagnosis. My team just got too big. Too many direct reports. And with companies flattening and widening the spans that are left, that explanation is about to get a lot more popular. It's a reasonable read — team size is the one thing on the org chart you can actually see. It's also not where the data points. Gallup's research on more than 16,000 U.S. managers found that 97% are still carrying individual-contributor work, and that managers who keep that work under 40% of their week stay just as engaged in their own jobs whether they lead four people or twenty-five. Cross that line, and their engagement slides as the team grows. That's the number missing from almost every manager training program, and it's the first one I'd hand any new leader I work with: not how many people you lead, but how much of a second job you're still doing. It also explains why coaching is always what gets cut. Leadership work never expires, and research on the mere urgency effect shows that urgent reliably beats important. Below: why the split matters more than the headcount, what aviation figured out about it, and three changes — one for the minute before a one-on-one, one for your calendar, and one for which half of your own work to cut first. // CHAPTERS 0:00 Why you feel overwhelmed as a manager 1:14 The player-coach ratio 6:01 Take back your one-on-ones 7:56 Schedule your feedback 9:57 Cut the paperwork // KEY TAKEAWAYS • Measure the ratio, not the headcount — in Gallup's data, managers under 40% individual-contributor work held steady in their own engagement at every team size • Treat dropped coaching as a design problem, not a discipline problem: leadership work loses because nothing about it ever expires • Give feedback a deadline — a standing weekly conversation turns the most postponable part of the job into something that shows up whether or not the deck is done • Close the loop before you switch tasks: one written line about where you stopped keeps unfinished work from following you into a one-on-one • Cut the paperwork before the craft — a boss's technical competence was the strongest single predictor of job satisfaction in Artz, Goodall and Oswald's data // NEWSLETTER Want to build your best team ever? Join 25,000+ leaders who receive these insights in my free newsletter: https://davidburkus.com/podcast // SPEAKING Like what you heard? Learn more or find out how to bring me to your company or event: https://davidburkus.com/keynote-speaker/ // ABOUT DAVID One of the world's leading business thinkers, David's forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. An organizational psychologist who serves on the faculty at Columbia University, Dr. David Burkus is the best-selling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world's top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. David works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA. David's keynotes aren't just entertaining and enlightening, they're evidence based and immensely practical—offering leaders at all levels a set of actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. // CONNECT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidburkus Facebook: http://www.FB.com/DrDavidBurkus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DavidBurkus
