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Tough Leadership Conversations:  How To Manage Managers (download transcript)

Adam Lacey

Welcome to the Tough Leadership Conversation series. I'm Adam, the co-founder of Assemble You, the audio learning experts and I'm joined by Ruth Farenga, Executive Leadership Coach, TEDx speaker, host of the Conscious Leaders podcast and author of the brilliant Next Level Leadership. Together, we'll examine how to navigate some of the most challenging workplace discussions.

Think pay rise requests, performance reviews, managing managers, dealing with divergent views, and talking about mental health. Unclear communication can lead to an erosion of trust, staff absenteeism, a breakdown of relationships and a decline in performance so getting these tricky conversations right is absolutely essential.

And this series is as much about reflecting inward as a leader as it is about your day-to-day management practices and techniques. In this series, we'll discuss approaching situations with a positive intention. Fundamentally, we get the most out of individuals when we concentrate on what's working rather than what we perceive to be broken. So with that in mind, let's get started.

So Ruth, what are we talking about today?

Ruth Farenga

Today we're talking about how to manage managers.

Adam Lacey

Fantastic. So yeah, the slightly nuanced version of management is when you are managing people who have their own teams and that's what we're going to get into today. So can we start with a bit of context around this, Ruth, and maybe why is this so difficult?

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I think for a lot of individuals who are stepping up into a role of managing managers, so you might be in the senior leadership role now, is that your role becomes different. You are no longer more of a tactical guide. You're much more of a mentor and coach to your reports. And your objective becomes to help them grow, as a manager, as opposed to direct them so much.

Of course that depends on the experience that you have and they have. They might be really experienced managers, they may be new. So you do need to alter that depending on the type of experienced individuals you're working with. But I think it does raise a lot of questions in how much to mentor, how much to coach. So that we can give people the autonomy they need to better build a team out in a way that works for them.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, I like that. And this one's really important. We found a stat in our research saying that nearly half so 47% of UK managers reported feeling too overwhelmed with their routine responsibilities in the last six months to perform their duties effectively. And if you are managing a team of people, half of which are feeling too overwhelmed to perform their basic duties, then that's a real problem. And you know how you support those people, how you make sure that they're overwhelmed and whatever doesn't knock onto their team is, yeah, is really important.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, you raised some good points there about protecting a team from your own emotions. You know, we might share a little bit about how we're doing, but we also need to self-manage in a way that helps people be strong and stable essentially for. Sounds a bit governmental, doesn't it? But essentially we need to develop enough stability that people will feel that consistency around us and they feel. So when we are working with managers, helping them, working on their self-regulation is really important.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, regulation. I love that word. And actually you talk about this in your book a little bit, Next Level Leadership. And I really like this. And actually there's a part of you that wants to be vulnerable, and open, and clear with your team. But actually what is really helpful, especially if you're trying to manage a team, is that there is some consistency and they can come to you. And you're an anchor point, almost that doesn't move or change too much. And that is more powerful in many ways than being completely open all the time.  How do you help people do that as well? But I guess that's my question. If we're managing managers here, how do you help others with that particular conundrum?

Ruth Farenga

I think starting by role modelling is really important. So you are a new type of leader in this business now. You're a role model for a number of layers, which means, the extent to which you show up day to day will be observed and scrutinised really by other people. So the extent to which you manage your mood and how you walk into a room, how you manage things like anger or reactivity becomes more and more important. So the headspace you need, the habits you develop, are gonna become critical for you to show up in the right way because basically people are watching. Way more people now. Teams of teams are watching. So this is, you know, your own kind of self-development becomes even more important.

Adam Lacey

So should we maybe talk about some of the common challenges with managing other managers? What are the things we need to look out for? And then how do we guard against those? So what kind of stuff should we be doing?

Ruth Farenga

So I think this will refer to items in the whole of this series around tough leadership conversations. So could be at pay of a team member of the manager we're working with. It could be about mental health, it could be about lots of different things. Refer to those specific modules for specific issues that you're dealing with. But I think from a managing manager's perspective, we need to adopt a different role with that manager and we need to help empower them to deal with this skillfully. As opposed to going and kind of doing it ourselves or micromanaging them or steamrollering them. It can be so tempting to give someone all of the answers. But you know, thinking about that 80/20 rule we talked about in the last episode around mental health. You know, 80% listening, 20% talking. This is what a senior leader needs to be doing.

So ask them good questions about how they should deal with this mental health situation or this paid performance situation. What do they know already that you can help them unveil? Only when you know, for example, if they don't know these things, they've had no experience, then of course, come in with your experience. But think about that coach-mentor divide, like, to what extent are you going to coach this person and help them discover the answers they already know? Because even if people are not experienced managers, most of us know how to behave. We just need to be given the opportunity to express that. So show them that you have faith in their potential to know what the right thing to do is, and then come in later with your mentoring, your experience, your stories. That is going to help them deal in a very tactical way with this promotion request or this mental health challenge, whatever it is they're dealing with. And that will help them build confidence that their own thinking is valid. And you're not just going to, like, come in with all the answers, because that can be really undermining of their new role that they're in.

Adam Lacey

Can be undermining. It can also make you a bit of a crutch in that instead of them making difficult decisions or having tough conversations, they just defer up to you. Which you don't want to, you don't want to happen.

The purpose of having people there managing the teams and you managing them is that they take on that bit of your role. If you've kind of, you know, moved up the organisation, that's the whole purpose. So there's a big element of almost of letting it go, isn't there? You've got to let it go. You've got to step back and you've got to say, "Okay, well, how do you think we should deal with that?" or "What you're feeling on this?" and like you say, bring relevant expertise and experience to the conversation, to the table. But it needs to be very much aligned with what they are thinking.

There's an interesting thing here as well, and it's probably worth mentioning this now around kind of leadership style. You might be managing a manager who has a very different leadership style to you. So, you need to give them that freedom almost to understand and express that style without you just telling them, "No, it's wrong. Do it this way."

Ruth Farenga

Absolutely. You might handle this a little bit different to the way they would handle it. That might play to their strengths. You're really thinking about the long term here. So long term, we want this person to feel really capable of handling all these conversations without even consulting you, right? So the way we're talking to them is helping them think more clearly. It's not helping them get all the right answers straight away because it might be faster to have a 30-minute meeting where you give them all the right answers straight away, but it's not going to help their future capacity if you are doing all the thinking for them. So maybe it takes an hour or 45 minutes, but you are allowing more space in the conversation for them to do the thinking and that's really powerful.

Adam Lacey

There, of course, are scenarios where yes, you may need to step in, you may need to help, you may need to be a bit more hands on, but I think your position should always be "How do I enable this person to do that?" rather than "How do I solve this for them?". Now you shouldn't be coming in and solving stuff or doing things for your managers. You should be helping them solve the problems. And that's a different mindset because when you're maybe managing a team, bit more tactical, as you talked about earlier, a bit more hands-on, right? “Oh, someone needs a quick solution. Great. This is it. Brill on we go.” Whereas now you're very much a coach, you're very much mentor, you're the sounding board and you are helping people get to their own conclusions more.

Ruth Farenga

And I think it's worth acknowledging how difficult this is for even really experienced leaders.

I interview CEOs in medium-sized, large companies, all the time and they're still struggling with this stuff. They're letting go, they're giving autonomy, the coaching style. So, wherever you are on that spectrum, it's okay. This is really normal to be struggling to give more autonomy to your managers. Recognise where you're at and just build from there. This is a big ongoing journey for most leaders. I'd say, 95%, 99% of the leaders are really having to focus on this if they're going to be a great leader.

Adam Lacey

Yeah. They say it's a journey, it's ongoing, it's something you need to work on all the time. Is there anything we definitely shouldn't be doing, Ruth, in these sort of scenarios for managing managers?

Ruth Farenga

Don't micromanage. So I know how tempting it is to micromanage. I've done it myself. Probably all done it. It's so much faster. You're like “Answers there, just…” But the conversation you're having that takes 10 minutes as opposed to the one minute when you give them the answer is valuable. You course you can give them some support at the end if they're not getting there and you're like, “Okay, we're not…” We do need to handle this particular situation particular way because of the policy of the company or because they're not getting to that thinking themselves. But giving them space is important, don’t micromanage.

Adam Lacey

I would add to that. Never kind of go around your managers directly to the team as well. That's a big no-no. I've seen that done in the past and I guess there are kind of exceptions to that. You know, if the manager's off or whatever or if one of their team members confides something in you that they want to be kept confidential. And there might be a conversation that happens there, but that's a very, very quick way to undermine the authority of the people that are working for you and frankly alienate them and destroy trust as well between them. Between you and them which is really important.

And I think the other thing as well is around like kind of access to information. Once you become a manager, there are certain things that you probably need to have access to. You, who are managing managers, you know, you may well be on the C-suite, you may be in the senior leadership position. Think very carefully about the information you give out. But give as much as you can would be my advice there because if they feel empowered and they feel like they have the relevant information, they're going to really help with that, with those difficult conversations when they inevitably come along.

And I'm thinking here, if companies going through change or change management processes or redundancies, restructuring. How do you make sure that the people working for you, who are managing the teams in the business, have the right level of information and context? And I think I've seen it done badly in the past where actually information has just been held at a very top level. And actually sometimes unnecessarily, sometimes completely necessarily, don't get me wrong, depending on the situation. But sometimes actually, no. You could have shared more of that with your managers and you could have actually empowered them with that information to help you make the best of what is a tough situation.

So, Ruth, just want to give you a fictional scenario as I do22 enjoy these. So you've been promoted into a more senior management role. You now kind of manage managers and you've got kind of new managers coming through. What should you be sitting down and talking with them about? Like big kind of, I guess, fundamentals of being a manager for the first time.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I guess you're really talking to them about team structures, ways of working and you're also trying to really understand their leadership style and approach. So what values do they hold true? What is it you're learning about them as a manager? They want to kind of waterfall in terms of the things they think are important.

Other than that, ways of working, I think, I mean, Adam, you and I are a big fan of psychological safety. So what is it in the team that's going to help create safety? Now, by safety we mean the ability to say what you're thinking, be yourself as best you can, get things wrong. Now, that will require structures that allow people to bring ideas that might seem silly or perspectives that aren't normal. So as a manager of managers, I think you're helping the person set up the routines and ways of working that will help all voices be heard equally.

As a team member, you may not be thinking about equality, equity as much, but now as a manager you're supporting someone who holds that level of responsibility. And they need to better hear all voices in the team, they need to not have favourites, they need to reduce their bias as much as possible. So you're encouraging them to take on this new level of responsibility and think about how those behaviours waterfall in the team. So this might happen in their performance discussions. You might be thinking about what measures are there which will help them step up to this role of manager. And it could be around inclusion in the team and hearing from all voices. How will they specifically be able to show that, demonstrate that, because they're having to be much more self-aware.

And the other thing you can do, which I think is key always, is role model this as best you can. You've become a manager of manager. Now people are watching you much more carefully. So thinking about the safety and the listening you're doing with others in your management team, people are watching and learning and thinking about how they're going to waterfall that into their team. So really focusing on yourself, I think is key.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, no, I like that. And I think you've got a story, haven't you? From your podcast interviews around someone who did this quite successfully.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah. Susan Glenholme is the managing partner a law firm called Debenhams Ottoway. And I have a real big respect for her because she's really great at creating psychological safety in her organisation. I think there are about 150 employees and they start from a principle of zero blame.

So people can get things wrong, of course, in law, and it can be pretty damaging at times, right? But they don't attribute blame to individuals, employees, in the organisation, because they say our leadership title, our management title comes with a responsibility. So very rarely does someone actively try and get something wrong, right? They might mess up, but that's if they've messed up, she said, "It's probably because we haven't trained them properly" or "We missed a process out that meant we didn't catch that thing".

So assuming that level of responsibility, as a leader, is really important. And when you're a manager of managers, that only increases, right? So you shoulder more responsibility and the ability to show, demonstrate, and waterfall, how you handle difficult moments when someone messes up, is really key. Because people are watching around you, they're really seeing how you handle that moment. And that can help people feel like there's space to get things wrong here without, you know, retribution. This is the type of environment I can grow, get things wrong, make up for it. I think holding the right environment. You're creating a culture really, as a senior leader now, so you're creating more, more structures for that.

Adam Lacey

And I like that. I think like the end employee is not to blame. It comes up to leadership. I think that's a really important message.

Ruth Farenga

"How did this thing happen, this slip up?", "Was it a structure?", "Did we not check in enough?", like always reflecting first on us. It's not that we don't have those difficult performance discussions, if indeed, the person was negligent, but that's quite rare really. There's normally like a web of things that happened, that meant that thing went wrong.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, it's never normally as cut and dry as someone just didn't do their job well. It's often more complex than that. And that is where you, as a manager are stepping in and helping solve. And so as a manager of managers, that's where you need to kind of get those managers to understand that mind shift, that change of mindset. That's really important.

Ruth Farenga

Your responsibility is much more about culture, much more about overall mindset shift and holding a group differently so you get the best out of them. And safety, being able to say things that might be wrong or right, or wacky or interesting. That's where we get the best from people's brains.

Adam Lacey

Cool. Ruth, let's summarise our top points from this.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I think the first one would be to really understand the manager who's coming in. Say it's a new manager, what their values and approach is. You don't just push your style onto them. You understand them in the way they want to grow and have values that they hold true. And that will help you tune in when they're making certain decisions. So really get to know them. There's lots of obviously, personality testing that people do or things that you can do that help you understand others.

The second thing would be back to this 80/20 we've talked about in other modules. With listening to speaking, your role is much more of a coach. Of course, you'll be doing some mentoring as well. You will be directing them to a certain extent. But think 20% for that, 80% is listening to the way they want to handle things and helping their experience grow. A lot of us know what to do, we just haven't had the time to think about it. And like you say, that will mean they're not just coming back to you the whole time for the answers, they're actually developing their thinking.

And thirdly, really double down on your own behaviour. You are a big role model now for the wider organisation. So your own headspace, your own self management, the ability to think strategically and take time out is going to become really key. So prioritise your own space, essentially, because you are more of a leader than a manager now. So adopt that time to lead.

Adam Lacey

Fantastic. Some great advice as always, and that's all we've got time for. Do join us for another episode in this Tough Leadership Conversation series.

You’re a newly promoted Head of Operations, and one of the department managers you now oversee, Frankie, has been coming to you regularly for direction on decisions you feel they could make themself.

Frankie is talented and well-liked by their team, but since your promotion, they seem hesitant to take ownership. They often ask questions like, “What do you think I should do?” or “How would you handle this?” rather than sharing their own ideas first. You suspect they’re second-guessing themself and unsure where the boundaries lie now that you’re their direct line.

You want to support their confidence and development—but you also want to shift the dynamic so they don’t rely on you to make all decisions.

1. How can you guide Frankie toward more autonomy without making them feel like they’re being pushed away or unsupported?
2. How do you balance coaching with mentoring in a way that respects their leadership style while encouraging growth?

How To Manage Managers

As a senior leader, focus on coaching and mentoring rather than micromanaging.

Empower managers, don’t undermine them. Give them autonomy to make decisions. Avoid stepping in too soon.

Listen more than you speak. Follow the 80/20 rule: listen 80% of the time, speak 20%. Ask guiding questions to help managers find their own solutions.

Regulate your emotions and lead by example. Maintain consistency in how you communicate, react, and manage stress.

Recognise and adapt to different leadership styles. Avoid imposing your approach and help them develop their own effective leadership identity.

Create psychological safety. Foster an open and blame-free culture where managers and their teams feel safe to share ideas and make mistakes without fear.

Share relevant insights with managers so they feel informed and empowered to handle difficult conversations and lead effectively.

As a leader, take time to reflect, strategise, and improve your approach. Your behaviour sets the tone for the organisation.

(download infographic)