There’s a difference between being good at your job and being good at managing people
I’ve worked with a lot of talented managers. Smart people. Operationally sharp. Great with clients. Great under pressure. But some of them had absolutely no ability to develop people underneath them.
I’ve seen passive-aggressive leadership. I’ve seen aggressive-aggressive leadership. I’ve seen managers who could point out mistakes all day long but had no idea how to actually coach someone through improving them.
A couple years ago, I had a manager who regularly called me stupid. Typing that out still feels insane to me. Not just because it “hurt my feelings”: honestly, you normalize things when you work in environments like that long enough, but because I cannot imagine being responsible for someone’s growth and deciding humiliation is the strategy.
I started thinking about this yesterday because someone asked me about my current team culture. I don’t get asked that often, and I realized halfway through answering that I probably sounded overly passionate about it.
But I work with a leader right now who’s younger than me and has more management instinct than half the people I’ve worked under in my career.
Earlier this week, I made a mistake with a client. He noticed it immediately, stepped in behind me, and helped close the situation cleanly.
Then, during the team update, he framed it as we handled it well.
Not me.
Not him.
We.
Afterward, he called me separately. No theatrics. No public correction. No passive comments.
He basically said:
“We both know what happened. Let’s walk through it.”
So we did.
We talked about where things broke down, what to watch for next time, and then he role-played the conversation with me so I could handle it better moving forward.
And then it was over.
No lingering tension.
No subtle reminders.
No ego.
No “lesson” dragged out for three weeks.
Just standards, accountability, correction, and forward motion.
That’s management.
A lot of people think leadership means catching mistakes. Real leadership is being able to correct mistakes without making the person feel small in the process.
Not everyone is cut out for resource management.
And honestly, more companies should recognize that before handing people teams.