What Defines a Great Manager in 2026
For years, we’ve asked the same question inside organisations:
What makes a great ‘Manager’?
We learn about it in University. We read books about it. We receive powerpoint presentations on it. We run training programmes on management. We learn from others in the firm, what defines it.
And yet - managers are more stretched, more burned out, and more overwhelmed than ever.
The uncomfortable truth is this: the problem isn’t that the managers we have aren’t good enough.
It’s that our definition of management hasn’t kept up with how work - and people - have fundamentally changed.
Truth #1 - Management ≠ Leadership
Before we can define what makes a great manager today, we need to clear up one of the most persistent myths in modern work:
Management and leadership are not the same thing.
Leadership & management skills are very different. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the dominant model of management was relatively clear and stable. Managers were expected to:
- Plan work
- Assign tasks
- Supervise execution
- Monitor performance
- Step in when things went wrong
As opposed to leaders - who were - and are still asked - to set vision, lead strategy, and build systems to enable the entire organization to meet its commercial goals.
Managers were generally ‘appointed’ due to their ‘subject-matter-expertise’ in the functional area they were being asked to manage. Rarely, were they also considered for the role if they had generalist skills across the business, or if they had exceptional people management skills. That was often considered the ‘soft-skills’ area, and the one you could ‘slip through on’ - if you had the prerequisite technical knowledge.
This model assumed fixed silos of speciality, predictable roles, linear careers, co-located teams, and long skill lifecycles. It was largely about control, coordination, and efficiency - more of process, than of people.
Fast forward to today - and that model has quietly collapsed.
Modern management is no longer about directing work. It’s about translation:
- Translating strategy into day-to-day priorities
- Translating organisational goals into meaningful work
- Translating how your area, flex’s and adapts to new technologies
- Translating constant change into something humans can absorb and adapt to
What’s striking is how little this shift has been explicitly explored inside organisations by leaders and owners. Most businesses are still operating in the old paradigm, while asking managers to perform in an entirely new one.
Why this matters deeply:
- You cannot ask people to be exceptional leaders and exceptional managers without recognising they are different capabilities.
- With the majority of businesses around the world deemed ‘small’, there is a tendency to bundle both roles to ‘save on cost’, which can ultimately however - end up costing more (in disengagement and churn).
- Research in organisational psychology consistently shows that people tend to be naturally wired more strongly toward either visionary, influence-driven leadership or structured, people-and-systems-oriented management - not both at once.
- Yet many managers are judged, promoted, and burned out trying to do both - often without training, clarity, or reward for either.
This confusion is one of the hidden drivers of manager stress today.
The Reality of Management in 2026: What Has Actually Changed
If management feels harder now, it’s because it is. Managers today are operating inside a fundamentally different pressure system than even a decade ago. Effective management at work has changed - here’s how:
Hybrid and Remote Work
Managers can no longer rely on proximity, visibility, or informal check-ins to be able to manage fluidly. With remote working and many people working in hybrid or fractional roles, visibility has widened between managers and teams. So trust, clarity, and visible outcomes matter more - and require far more intentional communication.
AI and Rapid Technological Change
Tasks are changing faster than job descriptions. Managers are expected to not just understand AI, but to know where to apply it, to Introduce it responsibly and to help people adapt - without making them feel in fear of their job. This requires complex skills many will not be prepared for and in small teams with low HR resources managing the 1-1 conversations, comes down to the Manager.
Employees Have Changed
Today’s workforce is arguably the most complex it has ever been. We are seeing much more diversity due to global boundaries expanding - both of race, religion, and culture - as well as many types of neuro-diverse and trans people now. We are also for the first time seeing the spanning of 5 generations working at once together - from Boomers, to Gen X, to Millenials, to Gen Z to the new Alpha entering. This creates a lot of complexity for managers as all have different values and reasons for working. People are also now much more informed and vocal about wellbeing, purpose and have clear expectations about being able to stay and grow.
There is no longer a “default employee” to manage.
Expectations Have Shifted
People don’t just want a job - they want:
- The ability to Grow - into a role that they see aligned to their values.
- Agency - the ability to be in control and self-direct their learning and development
- Flexibility - to work how they want and where they want.
- Psychological safety - to be themselves, to feel accepted and not be threatened at work.
- Transparency - of culture, values and performance metrics real-time
Silos are Flattening
Whilst traditional managers were kept safe due to ‘corporate memory’ or strong subject-matter-expertise in their vertical area, today’s businesses are converging. Technology is crossing boundaries between sales & marketing, HR & technology, strategy & finance. Managers are now expected to keep up with leaders on having ‘generalist knowledge’ on how the cross-borders of the organisation and the market are moving, and how they must translate those changes, to their area - both people, process and systems.
And Managers are the ones expected to understand, guide and provide all of this - often without the tools to do so.
Key takeaway - managers aren’t failing.
They’re navigating a role that has expanded faster than the systems designed to support it.
Guiding Principles for becoming a Great Manager Today
In 2026, a great manager is not someone who does more. They are someone who enables people to be more.
A great manager is someone who thinks of their primary role, as the person who creates the conditions for people to stay and grow and succeed - sustainably, humanely, and at scale.
Because without flourishing people, no systems or strategy will be profitable.
And so, management skills for people managers are on the move - away from technical, and towards humanistic.
Here are Five Guiding Principles - or management best practices - that define how we see great managers in 2026 and the Age of AI transformation:
1. They Shift From Owning Growth to Enabling Growth
Great managers no longer try to control their people’s growth, nor do they try to keep people where they are. They recognise that every single person needs some growth - some more than others - and they are the best source of how to design that. Great managers today recognise they they don’t personally have to design every career path or have all the answers.
Instead, they:
- Communicate clearly the organisations vision and future pathways
- Create clarity around opportunities within the silo and beyond
- Provide regular, honest feedback loops to enable - if possible - daily growth moments
- Enable people to take ownership of their development and encourage them to learn on the job
- Act as a mentor more than a coach - on the field, alongside, adaptively coaxing incremental shifts in people’s growth.
They act like a gardner who is wanting each plan, to contribute to the overall garden of the organisation.
They understand that growth doesn’t scale when it sits solely with the manager - it scales when people are given the structure, language, and agency to drive their own development.
2. They Embrace AI - Without Scarring their People
Great managers don’t resist AI, and they don’t blindly deploy it either. They see it for what it is - a tool. A tool that can optimise process, improve effectiveness, and lift people away from repetitive tasks enabling them to grow into something more suited to their broader human skill-set.
They openly educate themselves, and seek learning about AI. They learn to understand that & see that AI can be a great tool to reduce low-value work, free up time & resources for more human conversations about progression, and actively design new roles and responsibilities so existing people can use AI intelligently - rather than be replaced by it.
They recognise that new roles can be created, influence HR to adapt people who are suited into those roles without defaulting to displacement or recruitment - and hold the team - through the change.
This is a crucial shift. AI becomes a tool for inclusion and upskilling, not fear.
3. They Protect Their Time for Human Work
The best managers are intentional about what not to do. They don’t have to control and do everything. They recognise their own strengths and those in their team, and actively seek to elevate those first.
They look to reduce repetitive admin, broken processes, low performing tasks, one-off development conversations, and ad-hoc problem-solving that could be systemised. They are optimisers - seeking fluency and higher output through aligning people to the processes that produce the most.
Their personal goal? Is to do this so they are more enabled to focus on planning, strategic thinking, coaching moments, building trust across the organisation, and supporting their people through change.
The managers of the future believe their role is more to manage humans - than processes or data.
They design the system for achieving that instead of waiting for others to do it for them.
4. They Encourage Emotion and Actively Read the Signals
Great managers understand that emotion is not the opposite of performance - it’s the foundation of it. They are emotionally intelligent and agile, and know themselves well. They are capable of enabling others to grow emotionally, as well as just technically.
They want to normalise conversations about confidence, frustration, boredom, and motivation - the more they can see how people are feeling, the more they can manage the impact. They encourage dialogue and discourage hiding of emotions. They model this through their behaviour and are comfortable stating when something is making them ‘feel’ a certain way, and communicating what they are going to do about it - in the hope they give others the agency to also.
They actively look for emotional signals - not just output metrics. They know that emotional signals are the start of metrics being disrupted or elevated.
So they intervene early, before disengagement turns into resignation.
They have learned that psychological safety isn’t “soft” - it’s predictive. And a performance enabler.
5. They Use Data to Support People, Not Control Them
Modern managers use data to understand patterns about what’s not working, why it’s not working, who is stuck, who is plateauing, and who is quietly disengaging. Data and insights - that generally come from surveys or systems.
But they seek more real-time insights - from conversations and daily AI systems and trackers, that allow them to see more, use personal insight use data ethically - as a mirror, not a microscope.
The goal is not surveillance.
The goal is better conversations, earlier support, and fairer decisions.
What Organisations Can Do Differently
If organisations want better managers, they must redesign how management itself works. Here are three easy shifts we recommend starting with:
Stop Promoting Subject-Matter Experts Alone
Technical excellence is not enough. Managers must also have emotional intelligence, soft-skills that include agility, empathy and patience, and strong communication capability - the ability to both translate ideas into simple signals, and to communicate it with clarity.
And most importantly, have curiosity - about their people, change, and technology.
Stop Treating Management as “Either/Or”
A great manager is not:
- Either great at delivery or great with people
- Either technically strong or emotionally intelligent
They must be supported to develop both - and rewarded accordingly.
Invest in Manager Enablement, Not Just Leadership Training
Managers need to be enabled - they need to be understood and provisioned for. They are carrying one of the heaviest burdens in the system and rarely get the tools and training they need. Provision for them - provide systems, structure, and insight that they need - not just inspiration.
Where Actvo Fits
Actvo exists because we saw how much pressure managers are under — and how little practical support they’re given. We want to help. We designed a system specifically to support one of the greatest emerging roles managers have - to grow their people.
What we do:
- Take the hardest, most time-consuming parts of growth off managers’ plates
- Empower employees to own their own development
- Give managers insight & data that leads to better, earlier conversations, about development
- Support growth without disintermediating the manager or HR
- Open up real pathways for succession otherwise unseen, to avoid unnecessary churn.
Actvo doesn’t replace managers. It makes great people management possible at scale.
Ready to Experience It?
👉 Start a free 14-day trial of Actvo and see how it supports managers and empowers people to own their growth.
