When Managing People Drains You

One of the most exhausting parts of being a manager isn’t the workload, it’s being responsible for other people’s responsibilities. For some, this is energizing. Developing others, coaching them, mentoring them; it’s their favorite part of leadership.

But for many of us, especially those who prefer structure and independence, this part of the job can feel less like leadership and more like babysitting.

I’ve had employees who needed reminders for the most basic tasks, not major initiatives, not strategic projects, but things like filling out their timesheets. Every. Single. Week. It felt like reminding my son to take out the trash. Three years in, and I’m still saying the same words every Monday night. The parallel wasn’t lost on me.

And then there’s the challenge of keeping people on track without falling into micromanagement, a trap I desperately tried to avoid. They had clear tasks, documented expectations, and deadlines. Yet somehow, at the last minute, I'd discover things weren’t done. Cue the follow-up messages, the monitoring, the reminders I swore I’d never have to repeat again.

Some employees were wonderfully responsible. Truly. But others required continuous oversight, emotional labor, and hand-holding that slowly drained me in a way I didn’t fully recognize at first.

And mixed into all of this were the complaints, not just from customers or executives or other teams, but from employees themselves. Complaints about expectations, about workload, about changes they didn’t like, about tasks that fell slightly outside their original job description. Questions like:

“Is this something I have to do now?”

“Why wasn’t this mentioned in the interview?”

As if job descriptions come with lifetime guarantees.

Then there were the unforgettable moments of the employee who wanted to come in late because they stayed out drinking the night before, or the one who secretly worked a second job during office hours and accidentally put his other job’s meetings on our team calendar. These things can drive you mad.

But here’s the truth I didn’t understand until much later:

This kind of emotional responsibility wears you down if it doesn’t align with your personality.

Being accountable for other people’s behavior, output, and choices is a heavy emotional load, especially when you prefer autonomy, predictability, and self-directed work. Managing people isn’t just tasks, it’s emotional labor. Constantly.

Some people genuinely thrive on guiding others through these challenges. But for others, this level of oversight and emotional management feels unnatural, overwhelming, and deeply draining.

If managing people consistently leaves you exhausted, second-guessing yourself, or feeling like you're carrying the weight of everyone’s actions, it may not mean you're a bad manager, it may simply mean your personality is not wired for this kind of work.

And acknowledging that doesn’t mean failure, it’s just self-awareness.