I have had many managers, and even tried being a manager a time or 2.

In my opinion, the best managers are managers first, then maybe technical.
The reason I say this is that my view of a manager's duty is to deal with the politics and the budget and the personnel issues, and leave the technical stuff to the techies. When techies have to deal with these things they generally become broken.
Even splitting roles down to Project Managers and People Managers and Budget Managers is a good idea, because I haven't often found that the same person is good at all 3.