How do you manage other managers?

Question

Accepted Answer

Managing managers is **management one level removed: you lead through them, not around them**. Your leverage is now their effectiveness and the health of *their* teams, so the temptation to reach in and operate directly is your biggest trap.

## What changes

```text
MANAGING ICs            MANAGING MANAGERS
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Coach on the work    →  Coach on leading people
You see the team      →  You see it THROUGH them
Direct feedback       →  Feedback on their judgement & decisions
```

## How to do it well

- **Develop their management skill** — hiring, feedback, hard conversations, prioritization.
- **Hold them accountable for outcomes and team health**, not for doing it your way.
- **Skip-levels:** meet their reports occasionally to sense ground truth, without undermining the manager.
- **Don't go around them** to give direction; coach them to handle it.

## A skip-level done right

Use skip-levels to *listen* ("how's it going? anything I should know?"), then bring themes back to the manager privately — never to issue orders that bypass them.

## Pitfalls

- **Reaching in and operating** on their team because you used to do that job.
- **Tolerating a weak manager** because they are technically strong.
- **Losing touch with ground truth** by relying only on what managers report up.

## Why it matters

A weak manager can quietly damage a whole team — attrition, burnout, missed delivery.

Your job is to multiply good management across several teams.

Done well, you create leaders who create healthy teams, and the organization scales beyond what any single manager could hold.