Why Becoming a Leader of Managers is a Recipe for Disaster
Picture two years ago. You made it — you became a manager. The hard work paid off.
Then you discovered management was an entirely different job, and that everything which made you good at your old role translated into almost none of it. It took two years to get a grip on the basics: how to build trust, how to lead people, how to stop doing the work yourself.
Now the promotion comes. I've done this for two years and I'm still standing — surely this is the next step.
And just like that, you're a leader of managers. You've got this, right?
Probably not — and it almost certainly isn't your fault. Most leaders struggle in their first management role because their organisation never developed them for it. Then the same organisation promotes them again, and repeats the mistake at a level where the damage travels further.
The stakes change
Upset a direct report as a manager and one person's performance dips. Do it as a leader of managers and a whole team's does.
The elephant in the room
Some of the people now reporting to you applied for your job. Name it in week one, or it names you.
The real job
Coaching your leaders is the role now — not a thing you do once the real work is finished.
ℹ️ About this article
A contributed article from Glendon Jackson Evarts, who spent 13 years leading contact centres before moving into CX and contact centre technology. ACXPA publishes practitioner contributions to lift the standard of the conversation — the views are the author's own.
Why the Step Up Breaks People
Becoming a leader of managers looks like a bigger version of the job you already do. It isn't. It's a different job, and it fails for a reason nobody warns you about: the skills that got you promoted are no longer the skills being measured.
As a manager, your value was your own judgement and your own output. As a leader of leaders, your value is entirely second-hand. Nothing you do lands directly on a customer any more. It lands on a leader, who lands it on their team, who lands it on the customer — and every one of those handoffs either amplifies or destroys what you intended.
ACXPA's position on this
The industry treats leadership development as something you earn after the promotion, if there's budget. That's backwards, and this article is a symptom of it: an experienced leader writing down what he had to learn the hard way, because no one taught him.
If your organisation is about to promote a strong manager into a leader-of-managers role and has no development plan attached to it, that's not a promotion. It's an experiment being run on somebody's career — and on the teams underneath them.
Trust and the First One-to-One
From day one you'll hit the same wall you hit the first time you became a leader — except now you're managing your peers. The people you stood beside in the same role. Some of whom applied for the job you're now in, and didn't get it.
The stakes are also higher. As a manager, if you upset someone, it showed up in their performance. Now, if your relationship with one of your leaders is strained, it shows up in the performance of their entire team.
Rip the band-aid off
Have a kind but candid first one-to-one with every direct report, and name the elephant in the room. Ask them openly how they're feeling about it.
Then listen. This is not the moment to respond, defend or explain — it's the moment to understand. Take it in, and frame every conversation for the next few months with what they told you in mind.
Make the one-to-one entirely about them: how you can help them succeed, how you'll back their professional goals, and where you see the team going short and long term.
✅ Build trust by having integrity
Do what you say you'll do, when you said you'd do it. Size is irrelevant — honour the small commitments as visibly as the large ones. Nothing else you do in the first ninety days will compound like this.
✅ Show trust to get trust
Tell your leaders explicitly what trust means to you and why the relationship depends on it — then hand them something that proves you meant it. Trust you talk about is a value statement. Trust you demonstrate is a working relationship.
The Communication Problem
Alongside trust, the most useful thing you can be is an effective communicator. Sounds simple.
It isn't. In a Harvard Business Review report on a Harris Poll of 2,058 US adults — 616 of them managers — 69% of managers said they are often uncomfortable communicating with their employees. More than a third (37%) admitted they're uncomfortable giving direct performance feedback if they think the employee might react badly to it.
Read that number properly
It's US data from 2016, and it measures discomfort, not incompetence — those aren't the same thing, and it's worth being precise about it rather than inflating it into "70% of managers can't communicate".
But the discomfort is the point. Nearly seven in ten managers find the core act of their job uncomfortable — and people avoid what makes them uncomfortable. That's the mechanism by which difficult conversations get postponed, feedback gets softened into uselessness, and a problem that was solvable in March becomes a resignation in July.
So the tip is exactly as unglamorous as it sounds: get comfortable being uncomfortable. Learn to frame a difficult conversation. Find feedback structures that work and use them consistently rather than improvising each time. Being a genuinely effective listener and communicator means doing the things most managers quietly avoid.
Prioritisation and Delegation
As a leader of leaders you no longer hold just your team's problems in your head. You hold their teams' problems too. Volume alone will beat you unless you get deliberate.
Know your 80/20
Sort your challenges into the ones that move your objectives and the ones that can wait. Reorganising that list should be the first thing you do each morning.
The productive 20%
The fifth of your tasks that generate most of your results — usually the ones that, once done, dissolve a pile of other problems or move you materially closer to a goal. These go first, every day.
The unproductive 80%
The bulk of your task list, generating a small fraction of your results. Much of it feels urgent. Almost none of it is the job you were promoted to do.
Then delegate — properly
When a significant decision lands, resist the reflex to solve it yourself. You have capable adults reporting to you. It is not your job to dictate how they work; it's your job to collaborate, delegate and guide them to make good decisions for the collective.
The author's framing is that coaching and developing your direct reports is the role, not an adjunct to it. The practical test: involve your leaders in the big decisions, let them fail safely, and treat the mistake as a team learning rather than a personal failure. A leader who can only make good decisions when you're in the room isn't a leader — they're a delay.
Performance and Accountability
Here's the claim that will make some readers bristle: performance output should be the last thing on your mind.
The argument is that if you hold the fundamentals — a productive operational cadence, communication that actually lands, strong and trusting relationships, a collaborative culture — then high performance arrives as a by-product. A dictatorship will never get you as far.
A useful self-check: if you find yourself telling more than asking, barking more than collaborating, the problem to examine first is your leadership, not their output.
Where this gets misread
"Performance last" is a corrective, not a policy. It doesn't mean accountability is optional, and it isn't a licence to stop measuring anything — a leader who avoids performance conversations entirely has simply found a more comfortable way to fail.
What it means is that performance is an output, not an input. Managing the number directly, without touching the conditions that produce it, is how contact centres end up with leaders who hit target for a quarter and lose half their team in the next one.
Coaching and development objectives should be team-driven. Your job is to frame difficult conversations well, run coaching that changes something, set goals that energise rather than merely comply — and find the hidden strengths in each of your leaders and put them to work.
The goal isn't a team that leads the way you lead. It's each of them building their own leadership style, and you being the reason they got the room to do it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a leader of managers?
A leader of managers — sometimes a leader of leaders — is someone whose direct reports are themselves people leaders. In a contact centre that's typically an Operations Manager or Contact Centre Manager with Team Leaders reporting to them. The defining feature is that your influence is entirely indirect: nothing you do reaches a customer, or even an agent, without passing through another leader first.
Why is becoming a leader of managers so much harder than becoming a manager?
Because the skills that earned you the promotion stop being the ones you're measured on. As a manager, your judgement and output were the product. As a leader of managers, your output is other people's leadership — and it reaches the customer only after two or three handoffs, each of which can amplify or destroy what you intended. Most organisations promote people into this without any development, then wonder why it goes badly.
How do you manage former peers who applied for your job?
Directly, and in the first week. Have a candid one-to-one with each of them and name the situation out loud rather than hoping it dissolves. Ask how they're feeling about it and then listen without defending yourself — the goal of that conversation is understanding, not resolution. Left unnamed, it doesn't go away; it just goes underground, and it will surface later as something harder to fix.
How much of a senior leader's time should go to coaching?
Far more than most senior leaders give it — coaching and developing your direct reports is the job, not something you get to once the real work is done. Be sceptical of anyone offering you a precise percentage, including the ones in this article; the honest answer is that if coaching is the first thing dropped when your week gets busy, you've told your leaders exactly where they rank.
Should a leader of managers focus on performance numbers?
Watch them, but don't manage them directly. Performance is an output of trust, communication, cadence and culture — squeeze the number without touching those conditions and you'll get a good quarter followed by an attrition problem. That said, "performance last" isn't permission to avoid accountability. A leader who never has a performance conversation has just found a more comfortable way to fail.
What should you do in your first 90 days as a leader of managers?
Three things, in order. Have the candid first one-to-one with every direct report and name whatever is unsaid. Build trust through visible integrity — do the small things you said you'd do, when you said you'd do them. And establish a prioritisation habit before the volume of other people's problems buries you, because it will arrive faster than you expect.
Where to Next
Coaching & Performance Hub
Coaching frameworks, goal-setting templates and performance tools — the practical version of everything above.
Go to the Coaching & Performance HubTeam Leader Courses
Coaching, quality, operations and people leadership — for developing the leaders who now report to you.
Browse Team Leader coursesContact Centre Manager Courses
Operating model, KPIs, staffing and QA — the development most organisations forget to attach to the promotion.
Browse Manager coursesRelated Articles
Summary
There is nothing intricate about being a great leader of leaders. It's a blend of purpose, empathy, transparency, candour, vision and integrity — principles drawn from the likes of Simon Sinek, Ray Dalio and Brené Brown, and none of them a secret.
What makes the step up a recipe for disaster isn't the difficulty of the principles. It's that organisations promote people into the role and then leave them to work it out alone, at a level where working it out alone costs other people their teams.
So name the elephant in your first one-to-one. Honour the small commitments. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Delegate the decision, not just the task. And stop watching the number long enough to fix the conditions that produce it.
- About the Author
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With over 20 years of professional experience, I have built a dynamic career at the intersection of leadership, customer experience (CX), and technology. My journey began with 13 years of leading high-performing contact centres in fast-paced environments, where I honed my operational and people leadership skills, consistently exceeded targets, and fostering cultures of continuous improvement.
In the last six years, I have specialised in Customer Experience and Contact Centre cloud technology sales and consulting, including cloud migrations, and the implementation of AI to enhance productivity and the customer experience.
My unique blend of strategic thinking, customer-centric focus, and operational insight has enabled me to excel in competitive industries, building strong relationships with clients, partners, and teams. Passionate about transformation and innovation, I thrive on helping organisations adopt cutting-edge technologies to achieve their business goals while ensuring exceptional customer experiences.
I am always eager to connect, collaborate, and share insights with professionals who are passionate about driving growth, innovation, and positive change in their industries.
