Everyone Leaves the Bad Manager—But No One Thinks It’s Them

We’ve all heard it said: “People don’t leave bad jobs—they leave bad managers.” And we’ve all nodded in agreement, because it’s often true.

But here’s something I’ve rarely heard:

“I left because I was the problem.” “I was the bad manager.”

We talk a lot about toxic leadership, poor communication, and difficult bosses—but we almost never hear someone say they were the reason people left. And that raises a different kind of question:

Do managers ever think they’re the ones people are walking away from?

Maybe that’s because bad manager is too easy a label. Maybe it’s not that we have bad managers—but that we haven’t properly prepared people to lead. In all the exit interviews, pulse surveys, and culture assessments I’ve seen, one theme keeps coming back: we focus on the impact—but not on how we prepare people for the responsibility of leading well.

And maybe, if we looked closer at how we define leadership—and how we develop it—we’d stop framing “bad management” as a personality flaw, and start treating it as a systemic failure of design.

When Style Takes the Lead—and Development Falls Behind

Leadership development often begins with a personality assessment: MBTI, DISC, Insights Discovery. These can be useful tools for self-awareness. They give people a way to talk about themselves. And they often spark meaningful reflection. But they can also create a false sense of development. Knowing that I’m an ISTJ or an ENFP doesn’t tell me how to build psychological safety in my team. It doesn’t help me lead through ambiguity, or handle performance issues with clarity and care. It’s insight—but not instruction. What we need is a better starting point: not “Who am I?” but “What will this role require of me—and how can I grow into that?”

A Case That Stays With Me

One of my coaching clients—let’s call her Sara—was promoted to a supervisory role in a logistics firm after years of strong operational performance. Her MBTI results showed she was an ISTJ: structured, consistent, process-focused. She liked that description. It made sense to her.

But six months in, her team was struggling. Feedback from her direct reports suggested she was distant, overly critical, and hard to approach. She, on the other hand, felt she was doing her best—checking in regularly, offering clarity, trying to keep things on track.

Sara wasn’t failing because she lacked dedication. She was failing because no one had helped her understand what leadership now meant in this new context. She had insight into her personality, but no map for development. No feedback loop. No clear idea of how to shift from doing the work to leading others in it.

Her story isn’t unusual. It’s quietly happening in countless organisations right now.

What Integral Leadership Gets Right

Ken Wilber’s Integral Leadership framework offers a useful alternative. It’s not a style model—it’s a developmental lens. And what I appreciate is that it recognises leadership as something multi-dimensional.

Instead of asking, what type are you?, it asks:

How do you relate to yourself? (self-awareness, mindset, values)

How do you relate to others? (empathy, trust, collaboration)

How do you navigate systems? (processes, structures, complexity)

What purpose are you serving? (vision, culture, shared meaning)

If even one of these dimensions is underdeveloped, a leader can become stuck. But when we look at leadership through all four lenses, we begin to build something far more meaningful than personality fit—we build leadership capacity. Integral Leadership gives us a way to shape growth—not just describe tendencies.

Leadership vs. Management

There is also value in distinguishing between management and leadership. Managers are expected to organise, track, and deliver results. Leaders are expected to inspire, influence, and navigate complexity. Most roles require both. But too often, we promote people for being excellent managers—then expect them to lead without support.

Beyond Output: Building for Outcome

In many L&D strategies, there’s still a heavy focus on output: how many managers went through training, how many completed their assessment, how many filled in the feedback form. But what matters more is outcome: what changed as a result? Did team engagement improve? Did retention go up? Did collaboration increase? Was trust built? It’s easy to track activity. It’s harder—but more important—to measure behaviour. If nothing shifts on the team, then it wasn’t leadership development. It was logistics.

Homegrown vs. Hired In: Two Worlds, One Challenge

Another layer of complexity comes from who we promote. Homegrown managers often rise through loyalty, tenure, and cultural fit. They understand the informal systems and have earned peer respect—but may struggle with setting boundaries , rising to the task, or shifting identity once promoted. External hires may bring strategic edge, broader experience, or technical depth—but lack relational capital and the unwritten rules. Both types bring value. And both can fail—especially if we develop them in isolation. We need shared frameworks, shared expectations, and shared language so that leadership isn’t shaped by origin stories, but by future goals.

We often look at a struggling manager and ask: What went wrong? But maybe that’s not the right question.

Maybe we should be asking: What is this role really asking of them—and what are we doing to help them grow into it?

That question shifts the lens—from performance to possibility. From blame to design. From personality to purpose.

What I’ve Come to Believe

Leadership is not a personality trait. It’s a practice, shaped by experience, support, and systems that are fit for purpose.

We don’t need perfect managers. We don’t even need natural leaders.

What we need are environments that make growth possible, frameworks that make expectations clear, and development that’s aligned not just to who someone is—but to what the role, the team, and the organisation truly need.

And maybe, we need a little more empathy—for our managers, too. Not the ones who are manipulative or toxic. But the many who are doing the best they can in systems that haven’t given them the tools, the time, or the direction to grow. Before assuming your manager is the problem, ask yourself: Are they being supported? Are they overwhelmed? Is there something we can improve together?

If you’re a manager, ask yourself too: Am I being developed in the skills I actually need—or just handed another self-assessment and left to figure it out? Sometimes, before we walk away, there’s room to build something better—together.

Maybe we don’t need to ask what’s wrong with the manager. Maybe we need to ask whether we ever defined what their role now asks of them—and how we’ll help them grow into it.

#LeadershipDevelopment #StrategicL&D #ManagerSupport #IntegralLeadership #OrganisationalCulture #OutcomeOverOutput

Knowing I have readers is the big inspiration for writing these newsletters. They are not sponsored or funded. So if this resonates with your work, and you would like to read more, I would really appreciate if you subscribe to my newsletter. I share honest reflections and practical insights on mental health and what leadership really takes—beyond the theory and into the reality.