“Nicola, I need your help. We’ve just replaced our operations manager for the second time in eighteen months, and the team is still a nightmare. The new manager seemed perfect on paper, but three months in and we’re right back where we started. What are we doing wrong?”
I could hear the exhaustion in her voice. The frustration. The desperation.
What they were doing wrong was treating the symptom instead of the disease.
I’ve seen this pattern play out more times than I can count over my four decades in management. A team is struggling. Performance is down, there’s conflict bubbling away, maybe there’s been a grievance or two. And the solution that gets tossed around?
“We need a new manager.”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: replacing the manager rarely fixes the actual problem. In fact, it often makes things spectacularly worse.
I know that’s not what you want to hear. Especially if you’re sitting there thinking about all the issues your current manager isn’t handling. Or maybe you’re the manager who’s just been told your team would benefit from fresh leadership.
But stick with me on this. Because what I’m about to share could save you months of pain, thousands of pounds, and stop you from losing more good people in the process.
The Real Issue Isn’t the Manager
When a team is dysfunctional, it’s incredibly tempting to blame the person at the top. After all, they’re meant to be leading, right? They should have sorted this mess out by now.
The thing is, teams don’t become dysfunctional because of one person. They become dysfunctional because of systems, patterns, and behaviours that have gone unchecked. Often for years.
Let me tell you about a team I inherited back in Nottingham. On paper, the previous manager had “failed spectacularly.” There had been three formal grievances in six months. Two people were off with stress. The atmosphere was so toxic that people would literally walk out of team meetings in tears.
The departing manager was painted as incompetent, out of their depth, unable to handle the pressure. They left broken and convinced they’d never manage again.
Want to know what I found when I actually looked under the bonnet?
Nobody had clear job descriptions. People who’d been in post for five years genuinely didn’t know where their responsibility ended and someone else’s began. There were no team values or behavioural expectations, so gossip and undermining had been allowed to flourish unchecked. The previous manager had never been taught how to have a difficult conversation, so they’d either avoided them entirely or handled them so badly that people became defensive and angry.
There was no regular feedback system. People would go months without knowing if they were doing a good job, then suddenly there’d be a performance review where everything that had been simmering for half a year would come out at once.
The hard truth?
The previous manager wasn’t incompetent. They were set up to fail from day one.
The Pattern That Keeps Repeating with Your Managers
Here’s what happens when you replace a manager without addressing the root issues:
➡️ The new manager gets about six weeks of grace. Everyone’s on their best behaviour. People are hopeful. “Maybe this one will be different.”
➡️ Then reality hits. The same conflicts start bubbling up. The same underperformers continue underperforming. The same personalities clash in the same ways.
➡️ The new manager starts having the same difficult conversations the previous manager had. They’re met with the same resistance. “The last manager let us do it this way.” “This is how we’ve always done it.”
➡️ They haven’t been told what the previous manager tried and why it didn’t work, so they end up doing exactly the same things. Getting the same resistance. Making the same mistakes.
➡️ Six months in, the manager is working 60-hour weeks, micromanaging because they don’t trust the team to deliver, lying awake rehearsing difficult conversations they’re too scared to have.
➡️ The team lose faith. “Here we go again. Another new manager who doesn’t understand us.” Trust plummets. Your best people start quietly updating their CVs.
Eventually, the manager quits or gets pushed out. They leave feeling like a failure. Their confidence shattered.
Then the cycle starts again.
I worked with one organisation where this had played out five times in seven years. Five managers. Same team. Same issues. By the time they called me, they couldn’t find anyone willing to take the job.
The cost? Over £200,000 in recruitment fees, training, and lost productivity. Not to mention the human cost of five people who left feeling like failures when they weren’t.
What’s Really Going On in Your Workplace
When I’m brought in to work with struggling teams, I see the same patterns again and again:
There’s no clarity. I once worked with a team where three different people thought they were responsible for client communications. When a complaint came in, all three would jump on it, duplicate work, send contradictory responses, and get frustrated with each other for interfering. They’d been doing this for two years. Nobody had ever sat down and said “Sarah, you own this. Tom, you own that.“
The hard conversations haven’t happened. That underperforming team member? They’ve never had proper feedback. That conflict between two employees? It’s been allowed to fester. Those unclear expectations? Never addressed directly.
The manager knows there’s a problem but doesn’t know how to address it without making it worse. They’re worried about tribunals, about people getting upset, about being seen as the bad guy. So they avoid it and avoid it. And avoid it repeatedly!
Meanwhile, the team watches this happen and loses respect. They see that poor behaviour gets tolerated. They wonder why they’re bothering to work hard when Steve does the bare minimum and gets away with it.
There are no proper systems. No regular one-to-ones. No proper onboarding. No clear escalation process for problems. Just firefighting and hoping for the best.
I worked with one small business owner who was working 70-hour weeks because they were the only person who knew how to do certain critical tasks. Not because their team were incapable, but because they’d never documented the process or trained anyone else.
Team culture has been neglected. The cliques and factions, the gossip and backstabbing, and the passive-aggressive behaviour. The person who’s been there longest and thinks that gives them the right to undermine any change.
These patterns are incredibly difficult to shift because they’re embedded in the team’s culture. They’re “how we do things round here.” And a new manager walking in with fresh ideas is often seen as a threat to the established order.
Why Good Managers Fail in the Workplace
Here’s what breaks my heart: I’ve seen genuinely talented people convinced they were rubbish managers because they couldn’t fix a broken team.
Let me paint you a picture of what it’s really like:
You inherit a team where certain behaviours have been tolerated for years. You try to set new standards and you’re met with resistance. “The last manager let us do it this way.”
You try to have a difficult conversation with an underperformer and it goes badly because you’ve not been trained in how to do it. The person gets defensive. You feel awful and you back off.
You’re working 60-hour weeks trying to get everything done because you don’t trust the team to deliver. You know you’re micromanaging but you’re terrified of delegating in case it goes wrong.
You’re making yourself ill with stress. You’re not sleeping and you’re snapping at your family. And you’re convinced it’s because you’re not good enough at this.
The thing is, you’re probably doing better than you think. You’re just trying to fix problems you didn’t create, with skills you were never taught, in a situation where you were set up to struggle.
I’ve seen managers who had panic attacks before going into work go on to successfully lead teams of fifteen in their next role. Same people, different circumstances and different outcomes.
What Actually Works in the Workplace
If you’ve got a struggling team and a struggling manager, here’s what I’d recommend instead of reaching straight for the replace them button:
Diagnose the real problem. Talk to the team individually and talk to the manager honestly. Look at the data. What’s actually wrong? Is it lack of clarity? Specific people who need addressing? The manager lacking skills? Dysfunctional team dynamics?
Fix the foundations. Create proper role clarity – who does what, who owns which decisions. Set clear behavioural expectations that everyone agrees to. Create basic systems – regular one-to-ones, team meetings with structure, proper induction processes.
One team I worked with resisted having regular one-to-ones because they thought it was unnecessary bureaucracy. Six months later, those same people told me the one-to-ones were the most valuable thing we’d implemented.
Build the manager’s capability. Most managers have never been taught how to have difficult conversations, give constructive feedback, or handle conflict. That’s not their fault – that’s a development gap.
They need ongoing support and practice. They need someone they can talk things through with when difficult situations come up. They need to know it’s okay if people get upset – that doesn’t mean they’ve done it wrong.
Address the people issues directly. If you’ve got someone who’s genuinely not capable, or who’s creating a toxic atmosphere, you need to deal with it. Not in a vindictive way – in a “let’s be honest about what’s happening” way.
This means having the real conversation. Not the watered-down version. The “This isn’t working, here’s what needs to change, here’s the support I can offer” conversation.
Sometimes people step up and other times, they don’t. And then you need to make the difficult decision to let them go. Tolerating poor performance isn’t kind to anyone.
Give it time and stick with it. Real change takes months, not weeks. The team needs time to learn that the new ways are actually sticking, and that difficult conversations will now happen. That support is actually available.
You’ll face resistance. People will test boundaries. This is where most interventions fall apart – because it’s uncomfortable, progress is slow, and it feels easier to go back to how things were.
But if you stick with it, things shift. Not overnight. But they do shift.
When Replacing the Manager is the Right Call
Look, I’m not saying there’s never a time to replace a manager. There absolutely is.
If someone is fundamentally unsuited to management, if they’re unwilling to learn or change, or if they’re actively creating a toxic environment through their own behaviour, then yes, you need to make a change.
But before you make that call, you need to be honest about whether you’ve actually given them what they needed to succeed. Have you provided them with training? Support? Clear expectations? Time to develop and implement changes?
Or have you promoted them into a difficult role, left them to figure it out themselves, and then blamed them when they struggled?
Because I’ve seen both. And the difference matters enormously.
Final Thoughts on Replacing the Manager.
If you’re thinking about replacing your manager, ask yourself this: will a new person walking into the same situation with the same problems actually make things better? Or will you just be setting them up to struggle in exactly the same way?
The team doesn’t need a new manager. It needs the problems fixed.
That might mean supporting your current manager to develop the skills they’re missing. It might mean addressing team issues head-on. It might mean creating the structures and processes that should have been there all along.
It’s harder work than just bringing in someone new. But it’s the work that actually creates lasting change.
I’ve seen teams that were written off as impossible turn things around completely. Given the right support, the right tools, and the right approach, they transformed.
Your team can too. But only if you’re willing to look past the easy answer and do the real work that needs doing.
Struggling with a difficult team or feeling out of your depth as a manager? I work with managers and business owners to address the root causes of team dysfunction and build the skills, systems, and support structures that create high-performing teams. These aren’t quick fixes – this is proper, sustainable change that addresses the real issues. Get in touch to find out how I can help.
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