When knowledgeable, effective, hard workers
are  recognized and promoted to their first supervisory position,start developing and honing the new and different skills necessary to coach, manage and lead, for a while they seem to be able to stay right with the people for whom they are now responsible in terms of every detail of their job requirements. When performance, personnel, budget pressures increase the new supervisors start losing some of their old expertise.

If later promoted to become managers of supervisors, the difficulties increase significantly.

Men and women who continue to advance rapidly
to higher and higher levels in the organization,
having complex, interdepartmental responsibilities, perhaps thousands of people in their groups, soon realize that they cannot ever know as much as the multiple teams of people they now manage and lead.
 
Awakening occurs when higher level managers comprehend that they are making huge, risky decisions impacting customers, shareowners, employees and others, based on inadequate information while rushing into a complicated and unknown future.

Office cynics are busy with sneering e-mails, "Managers are people who learn less and less
about more and more until they know almost nothing about everything."

The better managers, however, start managing less and leading more. Given human frailties, they build adequate, not oppressive, controls, processes,procedures;  set performance standards, measure results.
 
Having done so, they train and trust their people,
empower them to use their initiative and creativity, help them become quality and customer focused, recognize and reward their good work, communicate candidly, listen carefully, decide ethically.

While leading, the better leaders serve their employees. They go out ahead and show the way,
even if the way is quite uncertain to everyone.