"they inspired me, helped me grow, and left me in a much better state than they found me.

Having managed multiple teams myself, it can be a fuckin' slog. There have always been one or two extremely high maintenance people on the team, conflicts to resolve, bullshit HR stuff to take care of, commitments to defend, bullshit to block, misses to explain and some amount of time tending to vestigial organizational dependencies that somehow are impossible to shake."

And that is pretty much what the gig should be.