Being a “Great manager” is becoming an impossibly big ask.

Managers matter. No, managers really matter. #1 driver of team productivity? The manager. #1 determinant of employee engagement? The manager. #1 reason high performers leave? The manager.

But you know this viscerally. Think back to that awful period in your career when you felt overwhelmed and uninspired by your work. You were dragging your feet to the office; questioning your self-worth; being unreasonably short with your family and friends. My guess is there’s a bad manager lurking powerfully in that story. Now think about the moment you’ve been most passionate about work. You surprised yourself by what you could achieve; left the office proud of what you’d accomplished and likely felt invincible in your personal as well as professional life. My guess is there’s an incredibly inspiring leader in that story too.

Managers matter. Not just for business productivity, but for the well-being of the members of a team. And I'm glad we do. When I decided to leave medical biostatistics research for the big, bad business world, one of the things that scared me most, was losing my sense of vocation - doing something that really mattered for the world. But in leading teams, I’ve had a bigger opportunity to have a real impact in the lives of people than ever before -- and, through my team’s incredible work, the world.

Managers are stretched thin...

Seeing the people on your team get inspired and unlock potential they never knew that had is one of the most rewarding professional experiences possible. So why are managers consistently the most overwhelmed people in an organization? The pressure of knowing how much your decisions will affect others’ ability to thrive is heavy, but it’s more than that.

Again and again, I hear from managers stretched and drained at the size of their jobs. They feel intimidated by number and diversity of complex skills they need to consistently nail to deliver for their team. They aren’t sure where anyone finds the time to address all these team health needs, given the pressure to deliver work at Internet pace. If that’s you — you’re not alone. And you’re right to be concerned! Science is quantifying the many critical roles a manager must play to guarantee team success. Long-gone are the days when being a good manager just meant effective project management and running performance reviews. Today, we know that, to drive peak team performance, managers need to deliver on a whole new set of complex competencies: EQ, Psychological safety, managing unconscious bias, coaching and gravitas just to name a few.

...because it takes A LOT to be a great one

This Spring, I went back to my research roots to find some answers on just how big the manager role needed to be. I, and three co-researchers, ran a study with entrepreneurial teams at Stanford and MIT to try and quantify which factors were most correlated with outsized team performance. We’ll be releasing our findings later this year, but as a preview - they’re pretty exciting! Our model had 65% accuracy in predicting startup team success based solely on their team dynamics. You read that right - completely blind to the idea, the product, or the market, we can predict how likely a team is to succeed based solely on the team dynamics their manager creates! Great news for team science, but an interesting predicament for managers who want to unlock the full potential of their teams. We identified at least 23 distinct individual intrinsics and 10 team processes that managers need to be mindful of building in themselves and across their teams to be successful… that’s a whole lot to stay on top of. And as the science advances, the list will likely grow.

Where does all this leave today’s manager? If you’re anything like me: Excited about how much we know about what makes managers successful. But also intimidated and overwhelmed by how much we have to do.

This job has gotten big. Really big.

We need to rethink how we support managers to do this big job

We’ve got to figure out new ways to empower managers to lead their teams to peak performance. Ways that reduce, not add to, their ever-growing to do lists. More HBR articles, LinkedIn posts (the irony isn’t lost on me!) and corporate trainings aren’t cutting it. Not while manager time is constantly under attack from the day-to-day execution of the job.

We need to make it easier for people managers to more effortlessly insert managing their team health into their existing workflows.

I’d love your help

People managers, are you feeling the pain of a rewarding but rapidly expanding job? How do you make space for all the things you need to do to manage your team productivity and health? Let me know in the comments and share this with other people managers you think would have great ideas.

When managers are at their best, their teams and organizations are transformed. That’s more than the bottom-line. It’s every team member who ends the day inspired and proud of their work.

Hoping to use the wisdom of the LinkedIn-verse to understand how we can make it easier for managers to be their best everyday.