Why good Managers stay stuck - and the wrong ones rise

In the past 12 years, I’ve worked across diverse organizations with what many would call "considerable success." My family would testify that I’ve often sacrificed myself willingly and passionately at the altar of work in pursuit of that success. And for the longest time, I believed that effort and excellence naturally translated into recognition and reward.

But somewhere along the way, I began to notice an odd dissonance. I saw colleagues rise just as quickly despite visibly doing less. They had time for vacations, hobbies, parenting, while I was drowning in deadlines. Was it me? For a while, I blamed my time management. That was until I got handovers from some of them and realized that their teams had been operating with little oversight or guidance. Some of these "high performers" were simply (and sometimes only) skilled at managing visibility.

I would step in to support their teams and be met with relief. Team members grateful to finally understand the rationale behind their work, finally getting direction, finally feeling led. In contrast, I knew some incredible managers - mentors, guides, enablers - who were routinely passed over for promotions. They were doing the real work, but no one seemed to see them.

I began to wonder: Were leaders blind to performance? Were they biased? Or had the system quietly begun to reward the wrong things? And I found that this happened in all kinds of workplaces.

Then I came across a diagram in Robbins and Judge's "Organizational Behavior" that gave language to my observations. You might have seen it if you've done your MBA in HR.

Curious, I dug into the original source - "Real Managers" by Luthans, Hodgetts, and Rosenkrantz.

What I found was equal parts validating and sobering.

The authors studied real-world managers across industries for four years. They categorized managerial activities into four buckets:

1. Traditional Management: Planning, goal-setting, task assignment, reviews.

2. Human Resource Management: Coaching, mentoring, motivating, supporting teams.

3. Communication: Information exchange, updates, documentation.

4. Networking: Informal chatter, politics, grapevine, socializing.

They then defined two key outcomes:

• Success: How quickly a manager gets promoted.

• Effectiveness: The quality of team output and satisfaction.

What they found was stark: Successful managers spent the majority of their time networking. Effective managers spent most of theirs mentoring and supporting their teams.

The activity with the least impact on success? Human resource management.

The activity with the greatest impact on effectiveness? Human resource management.

It felt like a cloud had lifted. Someone had put data behind what so many of us feel but can’t always articulate. The system doesn’t reward effectiveness - it rewards visibility, likability, and informal influence.

Here’s a quote from a "successful" manager in the study:

"I find that the way to get ahead around here is to be friendly with the right people... I really work at this informal side and have found it pays off when promotion time rolls around."

Contrast that with an "effective" manager:

"Keeping my people loyal and happy has to do with keeping them informed and involved... I make sure they have proper training and give them feedback."

Neither is inherently wrong. The problem lies not with the individuals, but with what organizations choose to notice and reward.

Most companies claim to promote based on performance. But if performance is gauged by surface-level polish, meetings attended, and who you know, then we’re not measuring performance, we’re measuring performance theatre.

The solution is obvious but notoriously difficult to implement: reward actual effectiveness. Build systems that track outcomes, team morale, and real leadership impact and not just optics. Encourage leaders to spend more time enabling their teams rather than endlessly managing upwards.

And what about those rare few who are both successful and effective? According to the research, they exist, but they’re few and far between (less than 10% of the sample). They walk a tightrope, balancing relational intelligence with robust work. They often work twice as hard to be seen and to deliver. And they burn out.

For organizations that truly want to be great, delivery from managers is non-negotiable. Perhaps where the burden can be lessened is the onus of being seen too. This makes me believe that an appropriate goal for today's organizations might simply be to make their effective managers successful.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/spiral-staircase-534078/