After years of managing group fitness programs, I’ve noticed one thing over and over:
Experience does not always make someone a good manager.
Sometimes, the person who has been managing a program for years knows the systems, the members, the instructors, every quirk of the facility, knows exactly what needs to happen...and still does not do the bare minimum.
Then a new person comes into the role with significantly less experience.
- They ask questions.
- They learn the program.
- They notice that nobody has followed up with the instructor who has been struggling.
- They realize three classes on the schedule have been dying for months and nobody has bothered to figure out why.
- They communicate with the team.
- They know what is happening in their studios.
- They respond to members.
- They fix small problems before those problems become large ones.
- They bring organization where there has been chaos.
- They bring energy where everyone has gotten used to indifference.
And within a surprisingly short period of time, the program feels different.
Why?
Because they care.
Sounds almost too simple, right?
But it really isn’t.
Yet, you’d be surprised at how hard it is for some to care.
Experience may make management easier. Care makes the experience useful.
Care is one of the most underestimated management skills
People talk a lot about leadership development, management systems, certifications, years of experience and industry knowledge.
And, yes, all of those things matter. But none of them can compensate indefinitely for someone who simply does not care enough to do the job well.
You can teach someone how to build a schedule or how to evaluate attendance. You can give them a checklist for onboarding instructors. You can show them how to handle substitutions, payroll, performance conversations, and member complaints.
But what is much harder to teach is the instinct that says: This program is my responsibility, and I want it to work.
It has nothing to do with whether someone is watching or whether there is an evaluation next week. And hopefully, it’s not because you want another title.
It’s because there are actual people depending on what happens here.
Members.
Instructors.
Front desk staff.
Other managers.
Owners.
And, ultimately, the business itself.
You can know everything and still be ineffective
This is where years of experience can become deceptive.
Someone can say, “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years.”
Great. What have you been doing for fifteen years?
Longevity tells me that you have occupied a role. It does not automatically tell me how well you performed it. You can understand the mechanics of group fitness management and still allow a program to deteriorate around you.
- Classes disappear.
- Instructor morale drops.
- Good instructors leave.
- The same problems happen repeatedly.
- Members stop coming.
- Nobody knows what is going on.
- Communication becomes reactive.
- Standards become optional.
- Everyone learns to work around dysfunction.
Eventually, the decline becomes so normal that people stop recognizing it as decline.
Longevity tells me that you have occupied a role. It does not automatically tell me how well you performed it.
And, of course, the manager may have an explanation for every single thing that is wrong:
The instructors don’t listen.
The members are difficult.
Corporate won’t support us.
Nobody wants to teach anymore.
People don’t take group fitness seriously.
The schedule has always been like that.
Maybe. I'm not saying any of that isn't sometimes true. But eventually there is another question worth asking:
Is it the program, or is it you?
That may be an uncomfortable question, but it's a management question.
Caring does not mean doing everything yourself
I want to make an important distinction here. Because this is where the concept of caring also gets undermined. Caring is not martyrdom. It is not working twenty-four hours a day and allowing a gym, studio, or team to consume your entire life. It is not answering texts at midnight or carrying everyone else’s responsibilities because they refuse to carry them themselves.
Look, good management still requires boundaries. And seriously, good managers often need better boundaries because they have to distinguish between what deserves their attention and what does not.
Care shows up differently.
It shows up as attention.
Curiosity.
Follow-through.
Standards.
Communication.
Accountability.
You notice. You ask. You address. You don’t repeatedly walk past something that is clearly hurting the program and decide somebody else will eventually handle it.
Caring about the program is not the same thing as sacrificing yourself for the program.
Good leadership requires both engagement and boundaries.
The new manager sometimes has an advantage
I have watched people with very little formal management experience come into struggling programs and completely change the atmosphere. They don’t possess some magical management gene. Often, they are simply willing to engage with what is actually happening. They aren’t yet numb to the dysfunction. They haven’t decided that poor attendance is just how things are. They haven’t accepted that instructors never hear from management. They don’t know that the broken process has been broken for four years, so they ask the dangerous question:
Why are we doing it this way?
And sometimes that question is exactly what a dying program needs.
The difference? The new manager learns quickly because they care enough to learn.They build relationships because they care enough to know their people. They look at the numbers because they care whether classes are succeeding. They address problems because they care what happens next. They create order because disorder bothers them when it interferes with other people’s ability to do good work.
Someone new can bring life, energy and order to a dying program without years of management experience because they care enough to pay attention.
Experience very much matters. But experience without engagement can become little more than tenure.
And hopefully not tenure that’s detrimental to the program.
“You’re such a great manager.”
People have said versions of this to me throughout my career. I appreciate it, because often, I do go above and beyond. But I have also thought many times that the praise is unwarranted, as I’m just doing my job. What I’m doing should not be the exception. Managing a program isn’t some mysterious thing.
There are skills involved, certainly. Experience helps. Judgment develops over time. Some situations require difficult conversations, political navigation, strategic thinking, and a level of discernment that comes from having been through things before.
But a great deal of management is remarkably ordinary.
None of that is glamorous, or even extraordinary. Maybe that is part of the problem.
Sometimes people want the management position more than they want the work of managing. They want the title. They want the authority. They want the recognition. They want the line on the résumé. They want the additional money.
They do not necessarily want the responsibility that comes with being accountable for the health of a program and the people inside it.
Sometimes people want the management position more than they want the work of managing.
Your team can tell whether you care
You don’t have to announce it.
People know.
Instructors know whether their manager watches what is happening.
They know whether communication disappears into a black hole.
They know whether excellent work is noticed.
They know whether poor behavior is tolerated indefinitely.
They know whether you will advocate for the program.
They know whether standards matter only when somebody above you happens to visit.
Members know too.
They may not know anything about the management structure behind the scenes, but they experience its consequences.
A strong program feels cared for. There is consistency. There is thought behind the schedule.
There are good instructors. Problems get addressed. Transitions are managed. People know where to go for answers.
There is life in the place!
And when nobody cares?
They can all feel it even more so.
Care has operational consequences
This is the part I think we sometimes miss when we describe caring as if it were merely a personality trait.
Care affects the business.
- instructor retention
- member experience
- class attendance
- communication
- team morale
- program standards
- problem resolution
- schedule quality
- member retention
- revenue
- the reputation of the program itself
Caring may feel personal. Its consequences are operational.
So how much does it cost you to care?
Maybe less than we pretend. Care does require something.
- Attention.
- Energy.
- Responsibility.
- Occasionally uncomfortable conversations.
- The willingness to acknowledge that something under your leadership is not working.
- The humility to learn something you don’t already know.
- Sometimes it requires doing a little more than what would technically allow you to say, “Well, I did my job.”
But I think the more interesting question is:
How much does it cost when you don’t?
- How many members leave?
- How many excellent instructors stop trying?
- How many talented people decide the environment isn’t worth it?
- How much revenue disappears one underperforming class at a time?
- How long does dysfunction continue simply because everyone has learned to tolerate it?
- How much time does the next manager spend repairing things that never needed to deteriorate in the first place?
And how many struggling programs are actually struggling because the person responsible for them has stopped caring whether they succeed?
Now, that’s a harder question.
Especially if you have been doing this for a long time. Because sometimes the answer isn’t another certification.
- It isn’t another management book.
- It isn’t a new scheduling platform.
- It isn’t your team.
- It isn’t your members.
- It isn’t even the program.
Sometimes you have to be willing to ask yourself:
Do I still care enough to lead this well?
And if the answer is no, that does not necessarily make you a terrible person.
Maybe you are tired. That’s understandable. Maybe you have outgrown the position. Maybe the organization has worn you down. Maybe you need a different challenge. Maybe this work simply doesn’t matter to you anymore.
Those are things worth acknowledging. We’ve all felt that at one time or another in our careers, especially if you’ve been managing for a while, and even more so, if you’ve been managing for a while in the same place.
But if you are going to continue being responsible for other people’s work, experiences, and opportunities, you owe it to them to know the answer.
Because experience can make you a manager.
A title can make you a manager.
An organization chart can make you a manager.
But care is what makes you pay attention to what happens after you get the title.
And sometimes, before deciding that the schedule, the instructors, the members, the market, or the program itself is the problem, a manager needs to ask one more question:
Is it the program, or is it me?
