Those Who Want to Become Managers Are Not Always the Ones Who Should Become Managers

The Great Misunderstanding of Management

In working life, we have often confused the desire to manage with the ability to manage. The person who wants to move upward, wants to decide, wants to be seen, and gladly takes the floor in the room is often assumed to be leadership material. We have built systems where self-confidence is easily mistaken for competence. Where social dominance is confused with clarity. Where charisma is confused with judgment.

But management is not theatre. Management is not about standing at the front and speaking the loudest. Management is not about having the most opinions, the most slides, or the most polished words about “team,” “strategy,” and “vision.”

Management is practical work.

It is about understanding the task. Seeing the people. Allocating resources. Prioritizing correctly. Taking responsibility when the wind starts blowing. Creating calm in chaos. Holding the direction when others lose it. Making decisions with incomplete information. Listening without losing authority. Daring to say no. Daring to change one’s mind. And above all: making other people function better together than they would have done on their own.

This is where many recruitment processes go wrong. Organizations often look for the wrong signals. They search for the person who appears most manager-like, not the person who actually gets things to work.

The Study That Turns the Question Around

The researchers behind the study tried to solve a classic problem: how do we really know whether a team succeeds because of the manager or despite the manager? In real organizations, this is difficult to measure. A manager may simply happen to have a strong team. Another manager may take over a group with major problems. A third may appear successful because the organization already has strong structures.

That is why the researchers used a design where managers were randomly assigned to different teams, while also controlling for the participants’ individual abilities. In this way, they could try to isolate the manager’s actual contribution to the team’s result. The study is based, among other things, on a pre-registered laboratory experiment with 555 participants, supplemented by LinkedIn data and a field study involving managers in retail.

The result is striking. The manager’s contribution matters greatly. But the people who actively chose or wanted to enter the managerial role performed worse than managers who were randomly assigned to the role. This is one of the most interesting parts of the study, because it challenges the entire idea that “the person who wants it most” is automatically the best suited.

This should make many companies stop and think.

How many organizations build their management recruitment precisely on self-selection? Someone applies for a management position. Someone signals ambition. Someone shows that they want to move upward. Someone talks a lot about leadership. Someone sells themselves. And because organizations often like people who appear driven, that desire is interpreted as proof of suitability.

But the desire to become a manager can have many causes. It can be about responsibility. But it can also be about status, salary, control, prestige, title, revenge, or the need to stand above others.

That is not the same thing as leadership.

The Dangerous Type of Manager

The most dangerous managers are rarely those who openly say they do not care. The most dangerous ones are often those who are convinced of their own excellence. Those who want the authority but not the responsibility. Those who love the role but not the people. Those who gladly lead the meeting but cannot handle the consequences of the decisions.

Such a manager can talk about development while creating fear. Talk about structure while creating bureaucracy. Talk about clarity while spreading confusion. Talk about responsibility while shifting blame when something goes wrong.

Many people have met them. The manager who has never carried heavy responsibility in reality, but still wants to steer those who have. The manager who leads through PowerPoint but has never been out on the floor. The manager who believes that a complex project can be controlled through more meetings. The manager who says “we must become more efficient” without understanding what the work actually consists of.

This is where the research becomes so important. It confirms something many practitioners already know: management must be measured by real effect, not surface appearance.

Charisma Is Not Competence

The University of Gothenburg summarizes the study by pointing out that good leadership is often associated with self-confidence, charisma, and personality, while the researchers’ findings suggest that more work-related abilities are stronger indicators of management skill.

This should be obvious, but it is not.

We live in a time where the visible often wins over the useful. The person who can express themselves well on LinkedIn, package themselves neatly, use the right leadership language, and display the right kind of confidence often gets a head start. But an organization is not built by slogans. It is built by decisions, priorities, experience, and the ability to see what is actually happening.

This does not mean that communication is unimportant. A manager must be able to communicate. But communication without substance becomes fog. Charisma without judgment becomes manipulation. Self-confidence without competence becomes risk.

Modern working life has sometimes become too in love with the presentation of leadership and too little interested in the craft behind it.

The Invisible Competence

A truly good manager is often not the one who is noticed first. It may be the person who helps others grow without taking all the space themselves. The person who sees conflicts before they explode. The person who understands when a team is tired, when a timeline is unrealistic, or when senior management above them is making demands that cannot be carried out.

It may be the experienced project manager who does not need to shout, because people already understand that they know what they are doing. It may be the stage manager who remains calm when everything is burning. It may be the production manager who sees three problems before anyone else notices the first. It may be the quiet coordinator who makes the logistics work while others take the applause.

Such competence is difficult to measure in traditional recruitment processes. It does not always appear in personality tests. It does not shout the loudest in the interview. It is sometimes lost because organizations would rather choose someone who “feels like a manager” than someone who can actually lead.

There is also an age dimension here. Many older and more experienced people have built exactly the kind of practical judgment that leadership requires. They have seen projects collapse. They have seen people break. They have seen systems pretend to function. They have learned that reality is always bigger than the plan.

But instead of valuing that experience, organizations sometimes chase younger, more polished, more formatted leadership profiles. People who know the language but may not yet have carried the consequences.

Women, Management, and Self-Selection

Another important part of the study is that women showed less interest in the managerial role than men, even though they performed just as well when they were actually given the role.

This is central. If organizations base management appointments on who volunteers or declares interest, they risk missing competent people who do not see themselves as obvious candidates. This may apply to women. It may apply to older people. It may apply to introverts. It may apply to people who are more interested in results than titles.

That means companies must stop waiting for the right people to raise their hands. They must become better at seeing who actually creates order, trust, and results.

Because the best leader may not say: “I should become a manager.”

The best leader may already be leading — without a title.

When the Wrong Person Becomes Manager

The cost of poor management is enormous. Not only economically, but humanly. Bad managers create staff turnover, stress, cultures of silence, passivity, and cynicism. They make competent people stop caring. They cause employees to lower their level of ambition, not because they lack will, but because they have learned that it does not matter.

Anyone who has worked in projects, events, production, construction, technology, IT, or culture knows this. Poor leadership is immediately noticeable. Information goes wrong. Decisions are postponed. Responsibility becomes unclear. People begin to protect themselves instead of solving the task.

In such environments, energy disappears.

It does not matter how good the team is if leadership paralyzes them. It does not matter how much talent exists in the room if the manager creates fear, prestige, or confusion. A strong team can survive a bad manager for a while, but not forever.

That is why the research conclusion is so important: management is not an administrative detail. It is a productive force — or a destructive force.

What Should Organizations Do?

The first step is to stop promoting people simply because they want to become managers. Ambition is not unimportant, but it must be combined with proven ability to create results through others.

The second step is to introduce more structured and competence-based processes for appointing managers. The researchers themselves argue that the results support more structured selection processes.

The third step is to separate the expert career path from the management career path. Many people become managers because it is the only route to higher pay and status. That is a system failure. A skilled specialist should not have to become a manager in order to develop. When organizations push capable professionals into management roles, they sometimes lose a good specialist and gain a poor manager.

The fourth step is to test leadership practically. Not only through interviews, cases, and personality tests, but through realistic situations: How does the person prioritize? How do they allocate work? How do they handle conflict? How do they communicate under pressure? How do they act when something goes wrong?

The fifth step is to dare to ask employees. Not through popularity contests, but through serious evaluations. Who creates clarity? Who helps others perform better? Who takes responsibility? Who do people trust when things become difficult?

Management as a Craft

We need to restore management as a craft. Not as a title. Not as a career step. Not as a reward. But as a practical profession with consequences.

A manager works with people, systems, time, money, direction, and responsibility. It requires maturity. It requires experience. It requires the ability to see both the whole and the details. It requires the ability to remain standing when others become uncertain.

In reality, a good manager is often a mixture of conductor, mechanic, psychologist, logistician, and firefighter. Sometimes the manager must show the way. Sometimes the manager must step aside. Sometimes the manager must protect the team from the organization’s stupidity. Sometimes the manager must say what no one else dares to say.

It cannot be reduced to charisma.

The Simple Question

Perhaps every management appointment should begin with one simple question:

Do others become better when this person leads them?

Not: Does the person want to become a manager?
Not: Does the person seem confident?
Not: Does the person have the right title?
Not: Does the person fit the template?
Not: Is the person good at talking about leadership?

But: Do others become better?

That is where the essence of leadership lies.

The new research challenges an old illusion. It shows that management matters enormously, but also that we often search for managers in the wrong way. Those who want the role the most are not always those who should have it. Those who would be best able to lead are not always the ones who place themselves at the front.

This should change how we look at leadership.

The organizations of the future do not need more people who want to become managers for the sake of management itself. They need people who can carry responsibility, create direction, and help others function better together.

It is not always the person who raises their hand first.

Sometimes it is the person who is already holding everything together — while others talk about how it should be done.

LINK: “How Do You Identify a Good Manager?”