Supermanagers: Are Your Managers Overworked?

Managers connect strategy to execution. When managers excel, organizations perform well, employees grow, and customers notice. When they're overloaded, everything slows: decisions stall, coaching disappears, and valued employees leave. Unfortunately, companies are increasingly creating "supermanagers:" mid- to high-level leaders carrying too many direct reports and too many responsibilities without enough support.

The Supermanager's Origin Story

A supermanager is someone whose role expectations outstrip their time constraints and authority. This is the person everyone escalates to: approvals, people problems, cross-team coordination, AI adoption, ad hoc projects, the list goes on. Often, they have a large span of control, a patchwork of responsibilities, and no formal deputies.

How does this happen? Rapid growth, cost pressures, and flatter org charts all play a part, and the shift shows up clearly in the data. Gallup's 2025 workforce research puts the average number of people now reporting to a single manager at just over 12, nearly 50 percent higher than it was in 2013. That's a continuation of a much longer trend: a classic Harvard Business Review study by Gary Neilson and Julie Wulf found that the average senior executive's span of control roughly doubled over a 20-year stretch, even as the businesses they ran grew more complex. Compounding the effect, organizations consolidate teams or freeze hiring without rethinking how the work gets divided. According to Korn Ferry's Workforce 2025 report, 41 percent of 15,000 employees surveyed worldwide reported that their companies had cut management layers in pursuit of efficiency, often without redesigning the roles left behind. Over time, tasks accumulate faster than they can be delegated or automated, and the manager becomes the bottleneck.

Thus we see a structural mismatch as opposed to a temporary busy season. The manager's stated purpose – coaching, strategic alignment, process improvement – conflicts with the day-to-day reality of the workplace – back-to-back meetings, approvals, and firefighting. Left unaddressed, the mismatch compounds and burnout seeps in.

Why Supermanagers are Bad for Business

First, overloaded managers slow execution. When too many decisions require a manager's sign-off or attention, timelines stretch and teams lose momentum. Second, leadership development stalls: managers who are firefighting don't have time to coach, so the pipeline thins. Third, employee experience suffers: teams receive less feedback and fewer growth opportunities, which drives disengagement and turnover. The scale of this third point is easy to underestimate: Gallup's analysis of more than 100,000 teams found that the manager alone accounts for at least 70 percent of the difference between a highly engaged team and a disengaged one, outweighing pay, perks, and mission statements combined. And finally, the short-term savings from consolidating roles are often offset by hidden costs such as rework, lost customers, absenteeism, and hiring expenses.

Turning it Around

To relieve overburdened managers, start with a clear diagnosis, then redesign roles and systems, and finally embed practices that prevent relapse.

Diagnose precisely. Don't rely on intuition. Map spans of control across the organization and run a short time-use audit for a representative sample of managers. Track how much time goes to coaching, performance management, stakeholder meetings, operational tasks, and escalations. The gap between what managers would like to be doing and what they're actually doing tends to be large: a UK time-use study by workplace consultancy Managementors found managers spending less than 30 minutes per day on active coaching and supervision, far below what they said they wanted to spend. Log the types of issues that reach managers and how often – are they people issues, approvals, or coordination problems, for example? Pair workload data with capability assessments to see whether the issue is one of volume or delegation.

Redesign roles and decision rights. Determining the "right" number of direct reports will depend on role complexity. For coaching-intensive, high-complexity roles, smaller spans (often in the 4–8 range) are more effective; routine operational roles can tolerate more. Where hiring is constrained, create formal deputy or team-lead roles to handle day-to-day supervision and routine decisions. Clarify decision rights with a simple RACI or decision matrix so routine approvals don't default to the manager. Finally, organize teams around coherent outcomes rather than fragmented functions to reduce cross-coordination overhead.

Sustain the gains. Teach managers to delegate well, run efficient 1:1s, and design routines that reduce interruptions. Use technology to automate approvals and standardize reporting so managers spend less time chasing status. This can't be a one-time fix. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found middle managers now report higher burnout than any other employee group, with role overload and lack of control cited as leading drivers, which is exactly why ongoing measurement matters more than a single reorganization. Add managerial health metrics to leadership dashboards, including average direct reports per manager, percent of time spent coaching, and number of escalations per month, and review them in resource planning cycles. Make deputy roles meaningful career steps so smaller spans don't create promotion bottlenecks. This has the added benefit of deepening your bench.

Making the Case to C-Suite

Frame the ask as capability building and risk reduction, not just headcount. Present three data points: time lost to escalations and meetings, engagement or turnover deltas in teams with overloaded managers, and the projected cost of delayed delivery or rework. The financial case is aided by hard numbers. For example, SHRM estimates that replacing a single employee costs between 50 percent and 200 percent of their annual salary once recruiting, ramp-up time, and lost institutional knowledge are considered. This cost compounds quickly in teams in which an overloaded manager is losing people faster than the rest of the organization. Pair the request (for example, two deputy hires per overloaded manager or a 10 percent reduction in direct reports) with an action plan and clear success metrics.

Anticipate objections and answer them in business terms. If leaders say hiring is not possible, propose internal redeployment through team-lead or rotating deputy roles. If they want to preserve a flat structure, show how reducing complexity, clarifying decision rights, and automating routine approvals can create capacity without adding layers. And if they believe managers already delegate well, use workload data to separate skill gaps from volume problems; even strong managers become bottlenecks when the system asks too much of them.

A Worthwhile Investment

Supermanagers are a symptom of organizational design that hasn't kept pace with growth, complexity, or cost pressures. Fixing the problem requires both structural changes such as right-sizing spans, creating deputies, and clarifying decision rights, paired with capability investments including delegation training, coaching, and measurement. Faster execution, stronger leadership pipelines, and a better employee experience: the outcomes are worth the effort.

At the Advanced Leadership Development Institute (ALDI), our executive coaching helps managers and senior leaders delegate with confidence, coach their teams, and lead with clarity instead of firefighting.