The “good,” benevolent manager doesn’t exist. Don’t sell that myth, It’s worth no more than an elixir of youth.

It’s a fairytale character, a moral mascot people wave around to avoid talking about the structure.

Because a real manager is caught between two fires.

On one side: their team, the concrete work, the individuals, the limits, reality cracking.

On the other: hierarchy, targets, KPIs, reporting rituals, performance you have to prove.

And in this conflict, there is a simple, mechanical law.

When two responsibilities are incompatible, the one that survives is the one that is vital to the system: profit.

So yes, a manager can be human, attentive, competent, even brilliant.

But the moment the trade-off becomes non-negotiable, they have one priority left.

Save their own skin with numbers.

And that’s when the whole LinkedIn farandole collapses.

Because what people call “good management” isn’t a style. It’s a structurally untenable position.

People are sold the idea that they will be protected when they are exposed by a system.

They’re told workplace suffering comes from a bad manager, when the system also produces suffering even when everyone is “doing their best.”

Even the “benevolent” manager ends up sucked into the machine.

And the machine has one very effective way to keep everyone in line.

It turns suffering into a language of work.

You’re overloaded > You prove your commitment.

You regulate > You become suspicious.

You keep going without complaining > People wonder what else they can add.

Result: you get collectives where overload is performed, where exhaustion becomes a status currency, where health becomes an ambiguous signal.

And where people start telling their situation in acceptable formats: even speech is under constraint.

Max-out isn’t just “too much work.” It’s the art of a story that manufactures adhesion. A capture through recognition and signals. A performance of commitment that becomes identity, then norm, then prison.

And when it breaks, we’re still told it was “a management problem.” No.

It was an architecture problem.

So we can keep publishing carousel posts: “The good manager does this, that.”

It reassures.

It moralizes.

It makes people believe it’s enough to be a better person.

Or we can stop lying to people.

A “good manager” doesn’t compensate for a structure that rewards blindness and punishes regulation. They can’t cancel the mechanism.

This masquerade of managerial injunctions must end.

We want organizations that stop reading work–life balance as a signal of extra capacity to load.

If you want to talk about prevention or management, start there. Not with ready-made slogans when you haven’t looked past the tip of your nose.

#Work #Management #MaxOut #MentalHealth #QWL #Organization #WorkplaceSuffering