I often hear from speakers, thought leaders and so-called experts who tell me that people managers will not have any value in the future. It is certainly a provocative claim in my opinion. It may be partially true in some industries as well as partially wrong in other businesses. I would like to share with you the right part which every leader should take seriously. However, the part that is wrong has some merit too!
What the Experts Have Right
The pressure on many small businesses and organizations to flatten, to operate more efficiently, and to eliminate layers that aren’t producing meaningful value is real. This isn’t just a tech industry phenomenon. Leaders who aren’t close to the work, who aren’t bringing value to the customer experience, and who aren’t actively contributing to the business to help it grow are going to find themselves on the wrong side of an efficiency curve.
AI is accelerating this dramatically. The AI tools now available to work alongside humans to handle tasks that previously required significant time and manual effort, are changing what productivity looks like at every level of the org chart. Leaders who spend most of their time babysitting employees, or task mastering, running recurring meetings, maintaining routines, and producing schedules without meaningfully growing the business are right to feel worried.
What the Experts Have Wrong
Where the experts, in my opinion, are going too far, is in suggesting that the human side of leadership is a liability. Many suggest that soon it will only be necessary for leaders to check in on an employee’s wellbeing maybe twice a year is a misunderstanding of what actually drives human performance.
I have found with my clients and coaching members that teams with high trust and strong relationships significantly outperform those without. Leaders who create an environment of caring for others generate more innovation, more engagement, and more accountability from the people they lead. Google’s landmark research on team effectiveness found that psychological safety was by far the most important factor in what makes teams perform.
However, I would agree that the part of people management that is dying and should die is the one where a leader’s entire value proposition is babysitting, keeping people comfortable, running one-on-ones without purpose, and acting as an organizational therapist. That is not valuable to any business or organization. AI will be simply making this weakness more visible at a quicker pace.
The version of leadership that will thrive is the one where leaders create clarity about what matters most, build genuine alignment around priorities, and generate movement by managing the culture and mindset of their team, while staying close to the work and connected to the people doing it. That combination of task and relationship, of proximity to the work and investment in the humans doing it, is not going away. It is becoming more important in the workplace.
The Bottom Line
The efficiency wave is real, and it is coming for the low-value version of leadership, whether we acknowledge it or not. The question and comments of leaders going away isn’t whether people managers have value. It’s whether you are the kind of people manager who has value. Leaders who don’t should start paying attention.
Whether you are an hourly employee, supervisor or manager, ask yourself these questions. Are you close to the work? Are you helping the business grow and move faster? Are you investing in the relationships of your staff, fellow team members that drive personal effort, collaboration and innovation? Those who can answer yes to all three don’t have anything to worry about. Now that is “MAGICAL”!
If you are struggling with having to babysit your staff, wish your managers were closer to the work in moving your business forward, would like more employee engagement in the customer experience, then contact me for a FREE Discovery Call and I will fix it. I will spend a few minutes diagnosing your business, and the engagement level of your staff and leaders. I will then help you strategize with all players on your team or business to come up with specific ways and examples to implement and carry out a better business experience that works best for you.
Just click the link to schedule your FREE Discovery Call: https://go.oncehub.com/DiscoverySessionCall Do it today so that you will be able to attract more customers, increase business as well as your employee engagement and never worry about it again.
John Formica is America’s Customer Experience Coach, team culture expert, keynote speaker, and Top 10 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty and Customer Experience. For information on customer experience evaluations and programs, leadership training, how to find and hire great people, affordable tailored training programs or to book John to speak at your next event, contact 704-965-4090 or visit our website at JohnFormica.com.