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Every firm has them. New managers who quickly find themselves stretched too thin. The recently promoted advisor who's "drinking from a firehose." And the team lead who, eight months into the job, is still saying, "it's just a busy season."
What you're seeing isn't a calendar problem. It's a job design problem. New managers encounter a predictable set of challenges that nobody took the time to warn them about or prepare them to handle – and because nobody ever properly coached them, they naturally assume the discomfort is their fault.
It isn't. It's the job.
So what can you, as a firm leader, do? A good place to start is to pay close attention to the following six hidden challenges that tend to quietly derail new managers, and consider the actions you can take to help them overcome each hurdle:
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Continuing to do their old work because it's familiar – The first instinct of every new manager is to keep producing. The work is comfortable, the metrics are clear, and the dopamine rush of closing a deal yourself is intoxicating, especially when the team is typically slower than you are.
The problem: Every time a manager does the work, they teach their team to sit back and watch. Every hour a manager spends on work that could be delegated is an hour not spent on what only they can do — coaching, hiring, deciding, and removing obstacles. The new manager becomes the bottleneck precisely because they're desperately trying to be helpful.
The fix: Urge new managers to audit their calendars at the end of each week. Have them commit to identifying anything someone on their team could do at 80% of their quality and to adding that task to the following week's delegation list. Eighty percent should be the bar, because if they wait for 100%, nothing will ever move.
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Losing their personal scoreboard – Producers always know how they're doing. Revenue, AUM, new clients, and closed deals tell them every Friday whether the week was a success.
The problem: Managers, on the other hand, don't typically have that. The work they did this week (e.g., difficult feedback conversations, the candidate they recruited, the strategy they aligned the team on) won't necessarily show up in the numbers for months. That lag is often disorienting. It can make new managers feel like they aren't accomplishing enough, which in turn drives them to produce, and in the long run makes them worse managers.
The fix: Build a new scoreboard. Track leading indicators for a manager, such as one-on-one cadences held, feedback delivered, decisions made, and talent moves. It will go a long way toward making them feel less lost.
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Delegating tasks but not authority – It's a classic new manager move… ask a team member to "take this on," then three days later get irritated and ask, "Wait, why did you make that decision without consulting me first?"
The problem: Delegation without authority is merely assignment. It exhausts both parties. The team member feels they can't move without permission, and the manager feels they can't disengage without something falling. As a result, nothing actually transfers.
The fix: When managers delegate, they need to clarify the level of authority they're delegating. "You own this. Make the call and tell me what you decided" is very different from "You own this. Bring me the options and I'll choose." Depending on the task, either can be valid. But confusion between the two is almost always fatal.
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Avoiding the hard conversations – Perhaps the single most avoided activity in management is giving direct feedback when something is awry. New managers find a hundred reasons to delay it. They tell themselves they need more data. They wait for the right moment. And they pray the individual will 'self-correct.'
The problem: Self-correction almost never happens. And performance gaps left unaddressed tend to become permanent. The rest of the team notices. Trust in the manager erodes – not because they're too demanding, but because they're not tough enough.
The fix: Work with new managers to prepare concrete, fact-based examples and to frame conversations as collaborative coaching rather than confrontation. Encourage them to focus on the business impact, actively listen, and set clear, measurable next steps. Get them to adopt a simple structure – situation, behavior, impact, expectation – and use it within 48 hours of the event. Speed matters more than eloquence.
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Losing their calendar and purpose – For the most part, producers control their week. Managers, on the other hand, don't. Their calendars fill with one-on-ones, team meetings, interviews, reviews, escalations, and the constant low hum of "hey, do you have a minute?"
The problem: New managers often describe their first six months as feeling like they "didn't accomplish anything" – meaning they didn't close a client, didn't produce, and didn't deepen existing relationships. But they did accomplish what they needed to by doing the work of a leader. It just doesn't feel like work to them because it doesn't end with a clearly measurable result.
The fix: Strongly suggest that new managers set aside and protect two blocks a week for deep work on strategy, thinking, and planning. Each block should be at least two hours. This will go a long way toward protecting them from being managed by their inboxes.
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Struggling with loneliness – This can be a difficult challenge for new managers. Their former peer group disappears as old colleagues no longer confide in them the way they once did. Team members no longer share the information they once did, and they suppress the opinions they once voiced. Meanwhile, the manager isn't yet part of the leadership team in any substantial or meaningful way. Essentially, they're in a hallway between two rooms, and the door closes behind them faster than the one in front opens.
The problem: Rarely discussed, this phenomenon can be brutally isolating. Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that manager engagement has dropped nine points since 2022, with the biggest year-over-year decline occurring between 2024 and 2025 – with the people falling hardest being managers under 35 and female managers across all age demographics.1 The loneliness isn't a personality flaw. It's a structural feature of the role nobody designed.
The fix: Urge your new managers to seek out a peer group outside the firm. A coach, a mastermind, or a small circle of other new managers in your industry. They can't effectively process their new role with the people they now manage, nor can they process it alone. So finding the support of a peer group becomes a success imperative.
How to Identify the Pattern Derailing Your New Managers
Look at the six challenges above, and you'll see a single thread that runs through them all. The new manager problem isn't a skills problem. It's an expectations problem. We move people into a fundamentally different job and then forget to tell them it's different. Then we're surprised when they struggle.
Keep in mind, the cost of this transition problem isn't theoretical. Gartner research, replicated across enough firms to become an industry baseline, estimates that roughly 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months. Combine that with Gallup's 2026 finding that managers drive 70% of team engagement, and the math is sobering. Most teams in most firms are led by people who were never adequately prepared for the job, and their engagement is bleeding out as a result.2
What Steps Can You Take This Quarter to Steady the Ship?
At ClientWise, we suggest the following three moves, with none of them being expensive:
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Name the transition. Have a real conversation with every new manager (and every candidate for promotion) about what the job actually is. Not the title. The job.
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Build a new manager onboarding process. Ninety days. Frameworks for delegation, feedback, and one-on-ones. A coach or an external peer group. And clear metrics that aren't their old production numbers.
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Audit your existing managers. Ask each of them which of the six challenges are still frustrating them, and together devise a plan to fix it.
The firms that can't or won't take these actions are the ones that will bleed talent down the road. Remember, the bottleneck in the middle of your firm isn't a person. It's a job no one designed and no one trained anyone to do. Fix the job, and the bottleneck disappears.
Coaching Questions From This Article
- Thinking about your recently promoted managers, how do you evaluate their success? Is the firm still focused on personal production, or have you actively built and socialized a 'new scoreboard' that measures their effectiveness as leaders?
- How often do your new managers assign tasks without clarifying the level of decision-making authority that comes with them? What specific frameworks can you provide to help them distinguish between 'make the call' and 'bring me options'?
- Given that 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months, what structural support (such as external peer groups, mentors, or dedicated coaching) do you provide to help your under-35 and female managers navigate the potential isolation of their roles?
1 Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report.
2 Gartner (formerly CEB) research on new manager failure rates (industry baseline, widely replicated).
