How to Know When You Need a Manager, Not Just Another Pair of Hands
When a growing business starts to buckle under its own weight, the instinct is almost always the same: "We need to hire someone." And that instinct is often right. But the follow-up question, “What kind of someone?” is where many small businesses go wrong.
There's a meaningful difference between needing another person to help carry the workload and needing someone who can create clarity, develop your team, and take real ownership of outcomes. The first is an extra pair of hands. The second is a manager. Confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes a growing business can make.
I’m sure many of us have seen this play out more times than we can count. A founder hires their best performer into a leadership role, or brings in someone with a polished CV and a confident handshake, and nine months later they have not lived up to the expectations. In these situations, the problem wasn't the person, but the decision that led to the hire.
First, the honest question: do you actually need a manager?
Not every scaling challenge requires a management hire. Sometimes what looks like a people problem is actually a systems problem.
If your team is struggling because nobody knows who owns what, decisions pile up with you, and there's no documentation anyone can reference, adding a manager on top of that mess won't fix it. You'll just have one more person navigating the same confusion, except now they're doing it with a title and your expectations on their shoulders.
Before you write a job description, ask yourself whether the real issue is that your operations haven't caught up with your growth. If that's the case, start there. Clarify roles. Document the three or four processes that matter most. Create decision-making authority so your team doesn't need to check with you on everything. You might find that these structural changes solve a good part of the problem and put you in a much better position to hire well when the time comes.
(If you're not sure where the real gaps are, the Operations Audit can help you figure that out in about 15 minutes.)
Five signals that it genuinely is time to hire a manager
Sometimes, though, the answer really is: you need a manager. Here's how to tell.
Quality is slipping despite strong people. Your team is talented and they've proven it. But lately, details are being missed, work is getting redone, and things that used to be sharp are coming out rough. This usually isn't a skill problem, but a sign that there's no one creating the conditions for good work. No one setting priorities, removing obstacles, or catching things before they become problems.
You're the escalation path for everything. Every question, every tension, every decision that's slightly outside the routine comes to you. You're in every meeting, every chat thread, every client call. You've become the default manager without ever choosing to be one and it's consuming your capacity for everything else.
Your best person is stuck in a player-coach role that isn't working. You asked your strongest team member to take on some leadership responsibilities alongside their regular work. It made sense at the time. But now they're doing both things at 50% instead of one thing at 100%. They're stretched thin, they're not getting the support they need, and the team isn't getting the leadership it needs either. The hybrid setup has hit its limit.
Burnout is showing up in indirect ways. Nobody's complaining but your sharp people have gone quiet. The energy in the team has shifted. Paid time off is either never used or suddenly overused. Humour has disappeared from conversations. These are signs that people are pulling back, and usually it's because they don't feel led. They feel managed by circumstance.
You're protecting your culture by avoiding growth. You know you need to add structure, but you're afraid it will dilute what makes your team special. So you delay and you keep the team flat because hierarchy feels like the enemy of the culture you've built. The irony is that without intentional leadership, culture erodes anyway (passively instead of deliberately).
If three or more of these resonate, it's probably not a systems fix you need. It's someone who can lead.
The mistake most businesses make next
Here's where it gets tricky. Recognizing that you need a manager is the first step, but it's what happens next that determines whether the hire actually helps. The most common mistake is hiring a doer when you need a driver.
A doer is someone who's brilliant at execution. They get things done. They're reliable, detail-oriented, and often the highest performer on the team. But put them in a management role and they do more of the same just with a bigger workload. They manage tasks, not people. They maintain systems but don't improve them. They keep things running but don't create the conditions for anyone else to grow.
A driver is different. A driver creates clarity where there was confusion. They develop people, not just processes. They make decisions and own the outcomes. They simplify rather than accumulate. When a driver joins a team, things start moving because they're making everyone else's work more effective.
The distinction matters enormously, and it's easy to miss. Doers interview well because they have strong track records of personal achievement. They can list everything they've done. Drivers, by contrast, tend to talk about what their team did. They describe how someone grew under their guidance, or how they simplified something that was too complex, or how they made a hard call that cost something but was the right thing to do.
What to look for instead of what you'd expect
If you're hiring a manager for the first time or replacing one who didn't work out here are some things worth paying attention to that don't show up on a CV.
Do they talk about people or about themselves? Listen for "we" language. The best managers describe wins that started with their team. They give credit repeatedly and naturally. If every story begins with "I," that's worth noticing.
Can they describe making someone else better? Actually coaching someone through a challenge, helping them develop a skill, or supporting them through a difficult stretch. A manager who can't tell that story hasn't done that work.
Do they reflect without defending? Strong managers can name something they got wrong and explain what they learned. They don't hide behind "it was a team decision" or spin every failure into a hidden success. They say, "I didn't see that at first. Here's how I fixed it." That kind of honesty takes a specific kind of confidence.
Do they ask about your team before asking about the role? Candidates who want to know who they'd be leading (what the team's strengths are, where they're struggling, what they're proud of) are showing you something important. They're thinking about the people, not just the position.
The timing question
One last thing, because it matters more than most people realise: when you hire is almost as important as who you hire.
Founders tend to delay management hires until they're underwater.
When you hire under pressure, you compromise. You pick the person who's available over the person who's right. You skip the structured evaluation because there's no time. You promote internally out of loyalty rather than readiness. And then the new manager walks into chaos they can't clean up, with expectations they can't meet, and a team that's already sceptical.
The best time to hire a manager is before you're desperate.
Where to start
If you're reading this and thinking "I'm not sure if I need a manager or if I need to fix my systems first" — that's a perfectly reasonable place to be. Most businesses are dealing with a bit of both.
Start by understanding where the real friction is. The Operations Audit will walk you through 80 questions across 8 areas of your business and show you exactly where the highest-leverage opportunity sits — whether that's structural clarity, delegation, team development, or something else entirely. It takes about 15 minutes and doesn't require an email.
Because the worst thing you can do is hire someone to solve the wrong problem. And the best thing you can do is understand the problem clearly before you make any decisions at all.