25 Hidden Traps That Derail New Managers (and How to Avoid Every One)

The day you become a manager, the skills that got you promoted quietly stop working. You were the best operator, the fastest planner or the most reliable driver on the team. Now your job is to get results through other people, and nobody has explained what that means. Most new managers find out the hard way, in front of the people they are supposed to lead.

This is not a personal failing. Gallup's analysis suggests companies pick the wrong person for a management role 82% of the time, often because they promote on tenure or on success in a job that involved no managing (Beck & Harter, 2014). Training, when it comes at all, tends to arrive years too late (Zenger, 2012). Meanwhile teams are getting bigger and managers are getting more tired (Harter, 2026; Gallup, 2026).

We went through the research on the move from individual contributor to manager: Linda Hill's long-running studies of new managers, Center for Creative Leadership derailment research, Gallup and Gartner workforce data, meta-analyses on feedback, delegation and motivation, and economics papers on the Peter Principle. The result is 25 hidden traps that derail first-time managers, each with the evidence behind it and three practical ways to avoid it.

The short version: New managers rarely fail because they lack talent. They fail because they keep doing the old job, lean on formal authority, avoid hard conversations and try to carry everything alone. Each of those traps is predictable, and each one has a fix you can start using this week.

Key takeaways

• Most manager hires are a mismatch. Gallup estimates companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time, and only about one in ten people has a natural talent for managing (Beck & Harter, 2014).
• Teams are getting bigger. The average number of direct reports per manager rose from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, nearly 50% higher than when Gallup first measured it in 2013 (Harter, 2026).
• Manager engagement is falling fast. Globally, only 22% of managers were engaged in 2025, down from 31% in 2022 (Gallup, 2026).
• Badly delivered feedback can backfire. In a meta-analysis of 607 effect sizes, more than a third of feedback interventions actually lowered performance (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).
• Clarity is collapsing. Only 46% of U.S. employees clearly knew what was expected of them in 2024, down from 56% in 2020 (Harter, 2025).
• The middle is the hardest place to stand. In a U.S. study of 21,859 full-time workers, 18% of supervisors and managers reported depression symptoms, against 12% of front-line workers (Prins et al., 2015).

How to read this guide: The 25 traps are grouped into four parts: the identity shock, the people traps, the execution traps and the self-management traps. Read it straight through if you are about to step up, or jump to the part that matches the problem you have right now. Citations lead to the full reference list at the bottom. This article is general information, not legal, medical or HR advice. For employment-law questions or a health concern, speak to a qualified professional.

Part 1: The identity shock: from star performer to new boss

Trap 1: Believing the title gives you authority

Most new managers expect to feel more powerful. Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill followed new managers through their first year and found the opposite. They felt more constrained, not less (Hill, 2007, 2019). In her HBR article "Becoming the Boss", Hill sets out the misconceptions that trip people up. New managers expect the role to be about authority, but it is really about interdependence. They expect power to come from their position, but it has to be earned through credibility. And they aim for control, when what they actually need is commitment, because compliance is not the same thing (Hill, 2007). People who only comply will do what they are told and little more.

How to avoid it:

• Assume your title buys you a few weeks of patience, not loyalty. Plan how you will earn credibility through competence, fairness and follow-through.
• Make a list of everyone you now depend on: your team, your peers, your boss, other departments, key suppliers. Interdependence is the job.
• Explain the "why" behind requests. Commitment grows when people understand the reason and have a say in how it gets done.

Trap 2: Being promoted for the wrong reasons, then repeating them

Organisations usually promote the best individual performer, and the evidence suggests that is a poor predictor of managing well. Benson et al. (2019) studied sales workers in 214 U.S. firms. In the working-paper data, doubling a salesperson's sales raised their chance of promotion by 14.3%, yet doubling a new manager's pre-promotion sales was associated with a 7.5% decline in their team's sales once they were in charge (Fitzgerald, 2018). This is the "Peter Principle" that Peter and Hull (1969) described half-jokingly, now backed by data. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they got the job, the most common answers were success in a non-managerial role or tenure (Beck & Harter, 2014). Neither measures the talent to manage.

How to avoid it:

• Accept that your old trophies are the entry ticket, not the qualification. Ask yourself which new skills the role needs, and be honest about the gaps.
• Look for the collaboration evidence in your past, such as training a colleague or leading a project, and build on it. Benson et al. (2019) found collaborative experience predicted better managers.
• If you help pick managers later, judge candidates on coaching, judgement and fairness, not just on who has the best individual numbers.

Trap 3: Measuring your worth by your old job

For years your value was visible: tasks done, loads shipped, tickets closed. As a manager, your output is your team's output, and that feels uncomfortable. Hill (2019) describes becoming a manager as a profound psychological transformation, not just a new skill set. Research on identity shows that people grow into a leader identity by trying it out, not by being appointed. Ibarra (1999) found that professionals moving into bigger roles experiment with "provisional selves", copying elements of role models and testing them. DeRue and Ashford (2010) showed that leadership identity is built socially: you claim it, and others grant it, or don't.

How to avoid it:

• Rewrite your personal scorecard. Measure your week by team results, problems unblocked and people developed, not by tasks you personally finished.
• Pick two or three managers you admire and borrow specific habits from each. Keep the ones that fit and drop the rest.
• Expect the new identity to feel fake for a while. That is a normal stage of the transition, not proof that you are in the wrong job.

Trap 4: Staying the team's best individual contributor

The quickest way to feel useful is to keep doing the work you are good at. Some of that is unavoidable: Gallup found 97% of managers still carry some individual-contributor work, with a median of 40% of their time. But above that 40% threshold, manager engagement fell, and it fell further as team size grew (Harter, 2026). The "player-coach" who keeps playing ends up with no time to coach. Mintzberg's classic observation studies show why this is dangerous. Managerial work is already brutally fragmented. Half of the activities of the chief executives he studied lasted less than nine minutes, and an earlier study he cites found foremen averaged one activity every 48 seconds (Mintzberg, 1975).

How to avoid it:

• Track for two weeks how much of your time goes on hands-on work. If it is well above 40%, decide what to hand off.
• Keep doing hands-on work only where it teaches you something about the job or helps the team in a crunch, not because it feels safer.
• Protect blocks of time for coaching, planning and one-to-ones before the day fills up with interruptions.

Trap 5: Mistaking imposter feelings for evidence

Many new managers privately feel they are about to be found out. That feeling has a name. Clance and Imes (1978) coined the term "imposter phenomenon" after studying high-achieving women who could not internalise their success. It is common. A systematic review of 62 studies and 14,161 participants found reported prevalence ranging from 9% to 82%, depending on the screening tool and cut-off used, and the feeling often travelled with depression and anxiety (Bravata et al., 2020). Feeling like a fraud in a brand-new role is a sign that the role is new. It is not evidence that you don't belong in it.

How to avoid it:

• Separate feelings from facts. Keep a short log of decisions you made and how they turned out.
• Talk to other new managers. You will quickly find that the feeling is shared and normal.
• If the anxiety is persistent or affects your sleep or health, speak to a doctor or an employee assistance programme. It is a health issue, not a weakness.

Trap 6: Waiting for training that never comes

Most new managers learn on the job, alone. An analysis of about 17,000 leaders in one consultancy's training programmes found their average age at first leadership training was 42, while people in those firms typically became supervisors around 30. That leaves roughly a decade of managing untrained (Zenger, 2012). William Gentry of the Center for Creative Leadership, author of a guide for new leaders (Gentry, 2016), reported that nearly 60% of new leaders receive no training after their first promotion (Center for Creative Leadership, 2016). This matters because training works. A meta-analysis of 335 independent samples found leadership training improved learning, on-the-job behaviour and organisational results. Programmes worked best with a needs analysis, practice, feedback and sessions spread over time (Lacerenza et al., 2017). Coaching shows positive effects too (Theeboom et al., 2014).

How to avoid it:

• Don't wait to be sent on a course. Ask for development in your first month, and come with a specific skill you want to build.
• Choose training that includes practice and feedback, not just slides. Spaced sessions beat a single crash course.
• Find a mentor or coach who has managed a similar team, and meet them regularly through your first year.

Part 2: The people traps: peers, friends, bosses and favourites

Trap 7: Trying to stay "one of the gang" with former peers

Being promoted over your friends is one of the hardest parts of the job. Your relationships change overnight, whether you want them to or not. Pillemer and Rothbard (2018) explain why workplace friendships get complicated. Friendship runs on informal, equal and voluntary norms, while organisations run on formal roles, evaluation and hierarchy. When you become the boss, those norms collide. Friendships at work do bring real benefits. In two field studies, people with more workplace friends were rated as better performers, but those same friendships also brought emotional exhaustion and the strain of keeping them going (Methot et al., 2016).

How to avoid it:

• Have an early, honest conversation with close friends on the team: "Our friendship matters to me. At work I will have to make calls you won't always like."
• Stay friendly with everyone, but be careful with private social time that others can't share. It looks like favouritism even when it isn't.
• Never use what you learned as a peer, such as private complaints, against anyone now that you are in charge.

Trap 8: Overcorrecting into "the boss"

The opposite reaction is just as risky. Some new managers, worried about being seen as soft, suddenly become distant, strict and formal. Cuddy et al. (2013) argue that people judge leaders first on warmth and then on strength. Leaders who lead with strength before establishing trust risk triggering fear, along with the defensive behaviour that comes with it. Hill (2007) makes a similar point: the authority your position gives you is limited, and influence has to be earned. A sudden change of personality damages the trust you have already built with former peers.

How to avoid it:

• Stay recognisably yourself. Change your responsibilities, not your personality.
• Show warmth first: listen, learn names and pressures, and follow through on small promises. Then set firm standards.
• When you have to be firm, be firm about the issue and respectful to the person.

Trap 9: Playing favourites without noticing

Every manager gets on better with some people than others. Leader–member exchange research shows that managers form closer relationships with some team members than with others. What matters is why. Chen et al. (2018) found that uneven treatment did less damage to group relationships when it was based on work, such as task performance and helping behaviour, than when it was not. The difference ran through the team's sense of procedural justice. A major meta-analysis of organisational justice found that fair procedures are strongly linked to trust, commitment and performance (Colquitt et al., 2001). Teams forgive tough decisions far more easily than unfair processes.

How to avoid it:

• Tie opportunities such as overtime, shift choices, training places and stretch projects to clear, published criteria.
• Check your own patterns once a month. Who gets your time, your praise and the best assignments?
• Explain how decisions were made, especially to the people who didn't get what they wanted.

Trap 10: Forgetting that you have a boss too

New managers focus downward on their team and forget to manage upward. That is a mistake. In a field study of 1,978 managers, those with stronger relationships with upper management were better at putting people at ease, and both qualities were linked to lower ratings of derailment risk from bosses, direct reports and the managers themselves (Gentry & Shanock, 2008). Watkins (2013) argues that agreeing expectations with your new boss is one of the most important tasks in any transition. You need to know what success looks like to them, how they want to be kept informed and what resources you can count on.

How to avoid it:

• In your first two weeks, ask your boss directly: "What would make my first six months a success in your eyes?"
• Agree how and how often you will update them, and stick to it. No surprises, especially bad ones.
• Bring problems early, with options. Your boss is a resource to use, not just a judge to impress.

Trap 11: Neglecting the network beyond your team

Your team can only deliver if the people around it cooperate: planning, maintenance, HR, customers, other shifts. Hill and Lineback (2011) describe three imperatives for new bosses: manage yourself, manage your network and manage your team. New managers tend to over-invest in the third and neglect the second. Hill's (2007) central point that the role is defined by interdependence, not authority, applies most strongly sideways. Peers in other departments owe you nothing, and influence there runs entirely on relationships and reciprocity.

How to avoid it:

• In your first month, meet every peer manager whose work touches yours. Ask what they need from your team and what gets in their way.
• Do small favours before you need them. Goodwill is hard to build in a crisis.
• Represent your team in cross-functional meetings, so its needs are heard and its work is seen.

Trap 12: Leaving expectations unspoken

New managers often assume the team knows what good looks like, because it is obvious to them. It usually isn't. Gallup reports that only 46% of U.S. employees clearly knew what was expected of them at work in 2024, down 10 points since 2020 (Harter, 2025). Psychology explains the gap. The "curse of knowledge" makes it hard for well-informed people to imagine what it is like not to know what they know (Camerer et al., 1989). The "illusion of transparency" leads people to overestimate how clearly others can read what is going on inside them (Gilovich et al., 1998). You think you have been clear. Your team is guessing.

How to avoid it:

• For each role, write down the three or four results that matter most and how they will be measured. Share it and discuss it.
• After giving an important instruction, ask people to play it back in their own words.
• Revisit expectations whenever priorities change. Clarity fades fast in busy operations.

Part 3: The execution traps: delegation, feedback and running the work

Trap 13: Micromanaging because you know how to do it better

When you were the expert, checking every detail made the work better. As a manager, it makes your people worse. Self-determination theory shows that people are most motivated and perform best when they have a sense of autonomy, competence and connection (Gagné & Deci, 2005). A meta-analysis of 72 studies covering 32,870 people found that leaders who support autonomy are strongly linked to employees' self-driven motivation, better wellbeing and lower distress (Slemp et al., 2018). Over-control is also a classic case of a strength being overused. The attention to detail that made you a great specialist becomes a weakness when it is pushed too far (Kaiser & Overfield, 2011).

How to avoid it:

• Agree the outcome, the deadline and the non-negotiables, such as safety rules and budgets. Then let people choose the method.
• Match oversight to experience. Check in more with a new starter and less with a proven performer, and say why.
• Before you step in, ask yourself: "Is this wrong, or just different from how I would do it?"

Trap 14: Failing to delegate, or dumping instead of delegating

Delegation fails in two ways: you don't do it, or you do it badly. Managers tend to delegate more to people they see as competent, who share their goals and with whom they have a good working relationship (Yukl & Fu, 1999). Delegation is in turn linked to better performance and satisfaction for the people receiving it (Schriesheim et al., 1998). Empowering leadership, which includes sharing authority and decisions, is linked to better performance, more helping behaviour and more creativity. The effect is strongest on creativity and helping, rather than routine tasks (Lee et al., 2018). Delegation also carries emotional costs that hold some people back. Across five studies, women associated delegation with more negative feelings and guilt than men did, and delegated less. Reframing delegation as developing others reduced those negative associations (Akinola et al., 2018).

How to avoid it:

• Delegate whole outcomes, not fragments. "Plan next week's dock schedule" builds people. "Type up my notes" doesn't.
• Explain the purpose, the standard, the authority they have and when you will check in.
• Treat delegation as development. Ask, "Who on my team would grow by owning this?"

Trap 15: Avoiding feedback until it becomes a crisis

Most people dislike delivering bad news, and new managers are no exception. Psychologists call this the "MUM effect": people are reluctant to pass on unwelcome information (Rosen & Tesser, 1970). An Interact survey run by Harris Poll, reported in HBR, found that 69% of managers said they were often uncomfortable communicating with employees (Solomon, 2016). Avoidance is costly. In a Gallup study of nearly 15,000 employees, those who strongly agreed they had received meaningful feedback in the past week were about 70% engaged, against about 25% for everyone else. Yet only 16% said their last conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful (Harter, 2026).

How to avoid it:

• Give feedback little and often. A two-minute comment today prevents a two-hour disciplinary meeting in three months.
• Describe the specific behaviour and its impact, then ask for their view: "On Tuesday the trailer left without the seal check. That puts the load at risk. What happened?"
• Give positive feedback just as specifically. People need to know what to keep doing.

Trap 16: Giving feedback that hurts performance

Feedback is not automatically helpful. Kluger and DeNisi (1996) analysed 607 effect sizes covering 23,663 observations. On average, feedback improved performance, but more than a third of feedback interventions made performance worse. Their explanation: feedback works when it keeps attention on the task, and it backfires when it shifts attention to the person's self-image. "You're careless" provokes defensiveness. "The pick list had three errors; let's look at where they came from" invites a fix. The way you deliver feedback matters as much as whether you deliver it.

How to avoid it:

• Talk about the work, not the person's character. Avoid words like "always", "never", "lazy" and "careless".
• Link feedback to a clear standard and a next step, so the person knows exactly what to change.
• Avoid comparing people with each other in public. It turns attention to status, not the task.

Trap 17: Skipping one-to-ones because you are "too busy"

When the operation is under pressure, regular one-to-one meetings are usually the first thing cut. That is a mistake. Organisational psychologist Steven Rogelberg's research on one-to-one meetings argues that they are among a manager's most important tools for engagement, retention and performance, and that they work best when they are regular and focus on the employee's agenda, not the manager's status updates (Rogelberg, 2024). Gallup's finding that meaningful, frequent feedback goes with much higher engagement points the same way (Harter, 2026). One-to-ones are where that feedback actually happens.

How to avoid it:

• Schedule short, regular one-to-ones (weekly or fortnightly) and treat them as the last meeting to cancel, not the first.
• Let the employee set most of the agenda. Ask: "What's getting in your way? What do you need from me?"
• For shift workers or drivers, adapt the format: a ten-minute check-in at shift change or a call works too.

Trap 18: Changing too much, too fast, or too little, too late

New managers often feel they must prove themselves with bold changes. Others are so cautious they change nothing. Both can backfire. Gabarro (2007) studied 14 management successions and found that taking charge moves through stages: taking hold, immersion, reshaping, consolidation and refinement, alternating between learning and action. Watkins (2013) argues the goal of a transition is to reach the "break-even point", where you contribute as much value as you consume, as quickly as possible. That starts with diagnosing the situation and securing early wins before making major changes. Hill (2007) adds that managing includes starting change, not just keeping things running.

How to avoid it:

• Spend your first weeks learning: ask each team member what works, what doesn't and what they would change.
• Pick one or two early wins that matter to the team, such as fixing a broken process or a broken piece of kit, and deliver them visibly.
• Save big structural changes until you understand why things are the way they are.

Trap 19: Letting a performance problem drift

The hardest conversation for a new manager is usually with someone who is not pulling their weight, especially a former peer. The temptation is to work around them and hope things improve. That is the MUM effect again: a natural reluctance to deliver unwelcome news (Rosen & Tesser, 1970). The rest of the team notices, and they see it as unfair. Research on organisational justice shows that perceived fairness is strongly linked to trust and commitment (Colquitt et al., 2001). When managers tolerate poor performance, the people who suffer most are the strong performers carrying the extra load.

How to avoid it:

• Address problems early and privately, with specific examples and a clear standard.
• Ask what is going on. Some performance issues have causes you can fix, such as unclear instructions, missing tools or a personal crisis.
• Agree a plan with dates, write it down and follow through. Bring in HR early if the problem persists.

Part 4: The self-management traps: overload, blind spots and derailment

Trap 20: Taking on an impossible span of control without saying so

Many new managers inherit a team that is simply too big to lead well. Gallup reports that the average manager's team grew to 12.1 direct reports in 2025, and that 13% of managers now oversee 25 or more people (Harter, 2026). In a Gartner survey of more than 6,000 employees and managers, the firm estimated managers have 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage, and 35% said they had more direct reports than before (Gartner, 2023). Larger spans are not automatically bad. Gallup found engaged large teams could still do well in some industries, including transportation, but the load on the manager rises sharply (Harter, 2026).

How to avoid it:

• Map your real workload: number of people, shifts, sites and decisions. Share it with your boss as data, not as a complaint.
• Build a layer of informal leads, such as shift leads, trainers or senior drivers, and give them real responsibility.
• Drop or automate low-value reporting so your limited time goes on people.

Trap 21: Underestimating the strain of the middle

Promotion is supposed to feel like a reward, but the research is sobering. Using British panel data on about 1,000 promotions, Boyce and Oswald (2012) found little evidence that promotion improved health, and promoted people showed a significant decline in psychological wellbeing. Johnston and Lee (2013) found that mental health declined around two years after a promotion. In the U.S., 18% of supervisors and managers reported depression symptoms against 12% of workers, and nearly twice as many reported anxiety (Prins et al., 2015). Anicich and Hirsh (2017) explain why: people in the middle constantly switch between acting powerful with their team and powerless with their own bosses, which creates role conflict. Gallup's latest global data shows leaders report more daily stress, anger, sadness and loneliness than individual contributors (Gallup, 2026).

How to avoid it:

• Expect the strain, and plan for it. Protect sleep, exercise and time off as seriously as you protect production targets.
• Build a peer group of other managers where you can speak honestly. Loneliness gets worse when you hide it.
• Know where your employee assistance programme is and use it early. Asking for help is a leadership skill.

Trap 22: Never asking how you're doing

New managers often wait for their annual review to learn how they are seen. By then, reputations have formed. Ashford and Tsui (1991) studied managers and found that actively seeking critical feedback improved how effective others judged them to be, while fishing for praise did the opposite. A meta-analysis of 30 years of research confirmed that feedback seeking is linked to learning and better performance, although the link with performance is modest (Anseel et al., 2015). Seeking feedback is also a signal: it shows your team that you take your own development seriously (Ashford et al., 2003).

How to avoid it:

• Ask one specific question regularly: "What's one thing I could do differently that would make your job easier?"
• Thank people for criticism, then act on it visibly. That is what makes them tell you again.
• Ask your boss and peers too, not just your team. Each sees a different side of you.

Trap 23: Assuming you are more self-aware than you are

Almost everyone thinks they see themselves clearly. Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich's research programme, spanning ten investigations and nearly 5,000 participants, found that about 95% of people believe they are self-aware. She estimates only 10–15% actually meet the criteria (Eurich, 2018). That second figure is her estimate, not a measured population rate, but the gap is the point. Her work also separates internal self-awareness (knowing your own values and reactions) from external self-awareness (knowing how others see you). The two don't always go together. New managers need both, because their mood and habits now shape the whole team.

How to avoid it:

• Ask "what" questions instead of "why" questions when you reflect: "What triggered my frustration in that meeting?" rather than "Why am I like this?"
• Get structured input, such as a short 360-degree review, after your first six months.
• Find one trusted "truth-teller" who will tell you how you really come across.

Trap 24: Following the classic derailment script

The Center for Creative Leadership has studied for decades why promising managers go off the rails. Van Velsor and Leslie (1995) identified recurring themes across time and cultures: problems with interpersonal relationships, failure to meet business objectives, failure to build and lead a team, and inability to change or adapt during a transition. Most derailed managers were once high performers. Strengths that served them early, such as independence, technical brilliance and drive, became liabilities in a bigger role. Hogan and Kaiser (2005) argue that leadership should be judged by how well a person builds and maintains a team that performs, not by personal results. That standard is exactly what the old star-performer habits neglect.

How to avoid it:

• Review the four derailment themes every quarter and rate yourself honestly against each one.
• Watch for strengths turning into weaknesses: decisiveness into not listening, high standards into perfectionism, independence into isolation.
• Ask your boss directly: "Is there anything about how I work that could hold me back later?"

Trap 25: Treating the first year as something to survive, not a chance to grow

The first management job is hard, and that is exactly why it is valuable. Research on developmental job challenges found that unfamiliar responsibilities and the need to create change are among the strongest sources of on-the-job learning for managers (McCauley et al., 1994). Dragoni et al. (2009) found that managers who had more developmental assignments showed stronger managerial competencies, especially when they approached work with a learning mindset. Hill (2019) found that her new managers learned mostly from experience, often by making mistakes, and needed time and support to make sense of them. The trap is to see the struggle as failure, when it is how management is learned.

How to avoid it:

• Keep a short weekly learning log: what went well, what went badly, what you will try next.
• Treat mistakes as data. Review them openly with your team when it is safe to do so. It models the behaviour you want from them.
• At the end of your first year, write down the five biggest lessons you learned, and share them with the next new manager.

Your 10-point action plan for your first year as a manager

You don't need to avoid every trap at once. Start with these ten habits, which counter most of the 25:

1. Earn authority, don't assume it. Credibility comes from competence, fairness and follow-through.
2. Rewrite your scorecard. Measure yourself by team results and people developed, not tasks you completed.
3. Cap your hands-on work. Aim to keep individual work at or below about 40% of your time.
4. Agree success with your boss early. Ask what a great first six months looks like, and set a regular update rhythm.
5. Write expectations down. Every team member should know their three or four key results and how they are measured.
6. Delegate whole outcomes. Share purpose, standards and authority, and check in at agreed points.
7. Give small, frequent, task-focused feedback. Talk about behaviour and impact, never character.
8. Protect one-to-ones. Short, regular, and mostly driven by the employee's agenda.
9. Ask for feedback on yourself. Seek criticism, thank people for it and act on it visibly.
10. Look after yourself. Build a peer network, protect your health and get support early.

Ready to build these skills on purpose? Take our free Leadership Flex Check to see how you lead under pressure, then explore BLTI's leadership and frontline management courses, designed for supervisors and managers in logistics, transport, warehousing and operations.

Frequently asked questions

Why do so many new managers struggle?

Mostly because the job is different from the one they were promoted from. Organisations tend to promote strong individual performers, but individual performance is a weak predictor of managing well (Benson et al., 2019). New managers also expect more authority than they actually get, and most receive little or no training before they start (Hill, 2007; Zenger, 2012).

How do I manage people who used to be my peers?

Talk about the change openly, early and one-to-one. Stay friendly but fair, keep opportunities tied to clear criteria, and never use information from your peer days against anyone. Expect some relationships to change. Research shows workplace friendships bring benefits and strains, and the strains grow when one friend becomes the other's boss (Methot et al., 2016; Pillemer & Rothbard, 2018).

What should a new manager do in the first 90 days?

Learn before you change. Meet every team member and key peer, agree expectations with your boss, clarify what each role is responsible for and deliver one or two visible early wins. Watkins (2013) frames the goal as reaching the "break-even point", where you add more value than you consume, as fast as possible.

How do I stop micromanaging?

Agree the outcome, the deadline and the non-negotiables, then let people choose how to get there. Match the amount of checking to each person's experience and say why. Research consistently links autonomy-supportive leadership to stronger motivation and wellbeing (Slemp et al., 2018).

Is it normal to feel like an imposter as a new manager?

Yes. Imposter feelings are common among high achievers in new roles, with reported prevalence varying widely depending on how they are measured (Bravata et al., 2020). Keep a record of your actual decisions and results, talk to other new managers and seek professional support if the feelings affect your health.

About this research

This guide was compiled by the Better Leaders Training Institute (BLTI) research team. Every source below was checked for authors, year, title, publisher and DOI or stable link, using publisher records and the Crossref database. We prioritised peer-reviewed studies, meta-analyses, books by recognised researchers and large workforce surveys. Where a figure comes from a consultancy analysis, a press release or a secondary summary, we say so in the text. Findings describe averages and specific samples, and your organisation may differ. This article is general information, not legal, medical or HR advice.

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Videos

Eurich, T. (2017, December 19). Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix [Video]. TEDx Talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdsOXZpyWE

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Pink, D. (2009, August 25). The puzzle of motivation [Video]. TED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Scott, K. (2020, October 29). Radical candor in 6 minutes with Kim Scott [Video]. Radical Candor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBDkz0TwLM

Sinek, S. (2014, May 19). Why good leaders make you feel safe [Video]. TED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmyZMtPVodo