The Leaders Closest to the Work Matter Most

Organizations are under pressure to become faster, leaner, and less bureaucratic. In response, many are flattening structures, widening spans of control, and eliminating layers of management. I have expereinced this recently within my organization with the federal government.

Some of this restructuring is overdue. Excessive approvals, duplicated reporting, and unclear accountability can slow good people down. Removing unnecessary bureaucracy can strengthen an organization.

But there is a danger hidden inside the pursuit of efficiency.

Organizations may be eliminating managers at precisely the moment they most need leaders who are close enough to the work to preserve cohesion, interpret change, and turn strategic intentions into workable processes.

A position can disappear from an organizational chart without its responsibilities disappearing from the organization.

The questions still need to be answered. Priorities still need to be reconciled. Employees still need coaching. Conflicts still need to be resolved. Someone must notice when a new policy does not fit the realities of the workplace.

When that leadership work is not explicitly assigned and supported, it does not vanish. It is distributed informally, performed inconsistently, or neglected altogether.

The resulting organization may appear flatter while becoming more fragmented.

Leadership under pressure

A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research offers an unexpected historical perspective on this problem.

Researchers examined the records of approximately 2.2 million Union Army soldiers during the American Civil War. They studied the effects of frontline captains on soldiers’ conduct, including whether soldiers deserted during battle.

The findings suggest that better captains helped keep their units together under extraordinary pressure. Leadership quality observed during ordinary periods predicted greater cohesion when the unit entered combat. The researchers also found evidence consistent with some effective captains leading by example and accepting greater personal risk.

Generals established strategy. Senior officers determined objectives. But captains influenced whether soldiers remained together when the plan encountered fear, confusion, and reality.

That distinction matters well beyond the military.

Every organization has people who determine direction. It also needs people who can stand close to the work and help others carry that direction into practice.

These leaders may not design the transformation. They make it executable.

They explain why priorities have changed. They translate a broad directive into decisions for the next shift, project, or customer interaction. They notice where the plan conflicts with existing systems. They maintain trust when employees are tired of hearing that another reorganization will make everything better.

In moments of significant change, proximity becomes a leadership capability.

The expanding burden on managers

The modern workplace is asking more of the leaders closest to the work while often giving them less capacity to lead.

Gallup reported in January 2026 that the average number of employees reporting to a manager increased from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025. That represents an increase of nearly 50 percent since 2013.

At the same time, 97 percent of managers surveyed had at least some individual-contributor responsibilities. The median manager spent 40 percent of working time on those duties.

These managers are not merely leading larger teams. Many are also expected to maintain a substantial personal workload.

The consequences are becoming visible. Gallup’s global data show manager engagement falling from 31 percent in 2022 to 22 percent in 2025. Managers remain more engaged than non-managers, but the decline is troubling because manager engagement affects the experience of everyone they lead.

This is not simply a question of how many direct reports a manager should have. The appropriate number varies with the work, the team’s experience, the degree of change, and the amount of coordination required.

The more important question is whether a manager has the capacity to provide the leadership the work requires.

Widening a manager’s span can be reasonable if processes become simpler, teams become more autonomous, or administrative burdens are removed. Widening the span while preserving every previous responsibility is something else. It is not necessarily empowerment. It may simply be overload.

An apparent saving on the organizational chart can become a hidden cost in execution.

Remove bureaucracy, not proximity

Organizations should not preserve management positions merely because they have always existed. Some layers genuinely add delay without adding judgment, clarity, or support.

But leaders should distinguish between bureaucracy and proximity.

Bureaucracy multiplies approvals, protects organizational territory, and moves information without improving it.

Proximate leadership does something different. It creates the human and operational connections through which the organization functions.

Before eliminating a management role, leaders should ask:

• Does this role primarily control information, or does it help people interpret it?
• Does it add unnecessary approvals, or does it resolve competing priorities?
• Does it merely transmit messages, or does it translate strategy into workable action?
• Does it monitor compliance, or does it coach people toward better judgment?
• If the role disappears, who will assume its essential responsibilities?

If senior leaders cannot answer the final question, they have not removed the work. They have only made it less visible.

Translation is real leadership work

Senior leaders often communicate change through presentations, town halls, and carefully written announcements. These are necessary, but they are not sufficient.

Employees eventually need to know what the change means in practice.

• What should we stop doing?
• Which customer receives priority?
• How should we handle an exception?
• What happens when the new process conflicts with an existing requirement?
• Which deadlines remain fixed, and which can move?

The leader closest to the work helps answer these questions. That person translates institutional language into operating judgment.

This translation also needs to move upward. Frontline managers see where policies create friction, where employees are confused, and where a process designed at headquarters does not match conditions in the field.

When those managers disappear or become too overloaded to listen, the organization loses an important sensing system. Senior leaders continue to make decisions, but with weaker information about their effects.

Change then becomes something communicated downward rather than learned through together.

Cohesion requires attention

Cohesion is often treated as culture in the abstract. In practice, it is built through repeated leadership behaviors.

People experience cohesion when priorities are clear, commitments are kept, concerns are heard, and standards are applied consistently. They develop confidence when someone notices strain before it becomes failure.

These actions require time and attention.

Gallup’s research found that meaningful weekly feedback is strongly associated with engagement. Approximately seven in ten employees who strongly agreed that they had received meaningful feedback in the previous week were engaged, regardless of team size. Among those who did not strongly agree, only about one in four were engaged.

The lesson is not that every manager must schedule a formal weekly review with every employee. Meaningful feedback can occur in brief conversations. But it must still be meaningful. It requires enough proximity to understand the person, the work, and the situation.

A manager responsible for too many employees while carrying a heavy individual workload may be present on the chart but absent from the team’s daily experience.

That is a capacity problem, not merely a time-management problem.

Formation must accompany restructuring

Many frontline managers enter leadership because they were excellent individual contributors. They understand the technical work, solve difficult problems, and earn the confidence of senior leaders.

Then the organization asks them to lead people through uncertainty without adequately preparing them for the transition.

They need more than administrative training. They need formation in the practices of leadership:

• listening without surrendering accountability;
• communicating difficult decisions honestly;
• coaching instead of immediately solving;
• translating strategy without distorting it;
• exercising judgment when policies do not fit;
• maintaining standards while preserving dignity; and
• receiving feedback without becoming defensive.

These capabilities do not emerge automatically with a new title. They develop through instruction, practice, reflection, mentoring, and experience.

If an organization chooses to operate with fewer managers, the formation of those who remain becomes even more important. Each manager carries greater relational and operational weight. Their judgment will affect more people. Their weaknesses will also travel farther.

Leaner structures require stronger leaders, not merely busier ones.

The stewardship of proximity

A faith-informed understanding of leadership adds another dimension to this discussion.

Service is grounded in presence. It begins with seeing people as persons rather than as units of capacity. It requires leaders to enter the lived reality of those they serve closely enough to understand both their contribution and their burdens.

This does not mean shielding employees from every difficult decision. Stewardship sometimes demands restructuring, cost reduction, or significant changes in how work is performed.

But stewardship also requires leaders to consider what human and organizational goods may be lost in the process.

The leaders closest to the work often carry knowledge that is difficult to quantify. They know who quietly holds a team together, which informal practice prevents recurring failures, and which employee is struggling despite appearing productive. They can recognize the difference between resistance to change and a legitimate warning about an unworkable process.

Organizations should be careful about treating this knowledge as expendable merely because it does not appear in a reporting system.

A flatter chart still needs leadership

The argument is not that every management position should be preserved.

It is that organizations must be clear about what they are removing.

If they eliminate duplicated reporting, unnecessary approvals, and status-protecting layers, they may become healthier.

If they also eliminate translation, coaching, local judgment, feedback, and relational presence, the savings may prove illusory.

Strategy is established at the top, but change becomes real close to the work.

An organization can flatten its chart and still deepen leadership. To do so, it must protect proximity, strengthen the managers who remain, and intentionally assign the leadership work that restructuring can otherwise leave behind.

The essential question is not simply, “How many managers do we need?”

It is, “Who will keep people connected to one another, connect strategy to reality, and help the organization learn while it changes?”

Reflection questions

• Which management roles in your organization primarily add bureaucracy, and which provide essential translation, judgment, and cohesion?
• Have you widened managers’ spans of control without reducing their individual workload or administrative burden?
• Can frontline managers clearly explain what the organization’s strategy means for the next shift, project, or customer decision?
• What information would senior leaders lose if the leaders closest to the work became unavailable?

This week’s leadership challenge

Choose one significant change initiative and speak with two or three frontline managers affected by it.

Ask them three questions:

1. What are employees hearing?
2. Where does the proposed change conflict with the way the work is actually performed?
3. What obstacle is preventing you from leading your team through it effectively?

Then remove one obstacle, clarify one decision boundary, or adjust one process within the next seven days.

That action will communicate something important: the organization does not merely expect frontline managers to deliver change. It is prepared to listen to them and equip them to lead it.

Sources: Gallup, “The Manager Squeeze: How Wider Spans Change the Job”; Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026; NBER, “Frontline Leadership: Evidence from American Civil War Captains”.