How Many People Can Someone Lead?

This resource first appeared in issue #91 on 10 Sep 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Other

How Many People Can Someone Lead? - Pat Kua

Whenever I give my “Help! I’m a Research Computing Manager!” talk, this is a question I get. Kua here says 5–7 (I often say 7 ± 2), but says it depends and gives a very helpful list of things it depends on. It includes the obvious things (a more experienced team - individually and working collectively as a team - requires a little less of a manager/lead, so you could lead more of them; similarly a more experienced lead can lead a few more people).

But there are a couple of nice other points here. The basic idea is that the manager/lead has a finite time budget, and the more of it goes into other things, the fewer people they have the time to effectively manage. Some of the things he points to are:

If the level of institutional bureaucracy is high - and for many of us, it is - then more time is spent on paperwork and administrative tasks, and so there is less time available to effectively manage or lead people
Leadership scope/leadership roles - if you are not just responsible for the people but also coordinating project delivery and also technical leadership, (a) that’s an exhausting role and (b) you’re not going to be able to lead as many people effectively. (Personal note: it looks like we’ll be getting a technical project manager shortly for our team and I can’t even tell you how excited I am about it).