Leadership skills are important, but I disagree that leadership is something you’re either born with or not. Leadership can be taught, learned, and practiced.
The real issue is that a lot of people who are pushed or drawn into management roles don’t actually like managing or leading. Some are pushed into management because they’re the most competent IC on the team. Others are drawn to management for the perceived prestige or possible career advancement.
Some common failure modes for engineers turned managers:
1. A person who enjoys quietly coding alone for hours at a time is not going to like being removed from the code to do management work
2. Anyone who dismisses relationship building and diplomacy as “office politics” or “brown nosing” is going to struggle to build the required relationships to get things done as a manager.
3. People who get exhausted from context switching or juggling multiple topics will hate the manager’s schedule.
4. People who loathe meetings are going to be miserable as managers.
5. Anyone who struggles to have difficult conversations, broach uncomfortable topics, or confront people who are causing problems is going to struggle to lead.
6. People who assume they’ll naturally be good at leadership or management won’t learn the necessary skills fast enough, unless their company forces it on them. There are many good resources for learning management and leadership skills, but it’s not uncommon for first time managers to assume they’ll learn it on the fly.