People decide to go into management for any number of reasons. When I ask people why the want a management role many say they like the idea of helping to grow and develop others. Some say it is the way to advancement in the company. And still others say they want to have a larger impact in the company and the way to do that is to have a team so they can influence more. It can be all of these reasons or others.
It’s important to understand your intention when going into management. Whether you go into the role to grow and develop people, or you want to advance your career; in either case, it requires you to care about the people you are managing. Even if your intention is to advance your career, it requires that you have the best interest of the team in mind as you work towards your success. Your success is dependent on the team and the team’s success is dependent on you. Your actions speak volumes, and the team will know very quickly whether you are in it for yourself or truly care about them. Caring about them means learning about them and what motivates them, understanding what they do, setting goals and objectives with them, finding ways to support them in achieving these goals, and holding them accountable to meeting expectations. And then recognizing them when they do it well.
As an individual contributor you must deliver results on the goals agreed to by you and your manager. You are mainly responsible for getting your job done. It doesn’t mean that you don’t rely on others in some way (data, handoffs, etc.), however, the work is yours. As a manager, you are still responsible for driving results, but now you must do that through others versus doing the work yourself. This is a hard change for new some managers to master. They want to ensure the team is producing quality work so not only does the team look good, they look good too. This is totally understandable and good for everybody. However, often new managers jump into solves problems rather than coach those on their teams to solve the problems. In the “hurry up” pace in the world of work, I understand how that might happen, but as a manager, it is your job to coach, motivate and inspire your team to get quality work done, and done on time. Remember, your way is not the only way and you need to bring an open mind to how the work gets done.
There are some working managers where part of their job is managing the team and the other percentage of time is spent on doing individual work. I’ve especially seen this in software engineering. This seems to work because it gives the person people management experience, yet they stay close to the work they love. However, this probably works better at an entry-level management role. As you move up in the organization this will not work as well. At the higher levels of management, the expectation is that you become more strategic versus tactical and there is really no time to do the individual work. So, if you want to continue to achieve as an individual because the actual hands-on work is so important to you, then perhaps a management career is not for you.
Finding ways to communicate to your team is vital if you are to be successful in your role of manager. There are all types of communication needed from the manager to the employees. For example, your team wants to feel connected to the business, and if you don’t push down information from higher up or you don’t push it down fast enough, that can become a problem. People may perceive that you don’t trust them with the information or even that you don’t care enough to provide the information. So, when thinking about taking a management role know that communication is a very big part of the job.
There are individuals that want to move up in their careers and know that they don’t want to manage people. Some companies are establishing career tracks for those individual contributors. So, as you are looking for the right company ensure that you are asking the question around promotability and growth so you don’t hit a dead end.
I often hear from people that they don’t want to become people managers because politics play too big a role and they don’t want to deal with it. If that is the only reason you don’t want to be a manager, you may want to rethink this. You don’t have to play politics, but as a manager, you need to be aware of how decisions are being made, how to engage stakeholders so you get what you need, and how to ensure the work that you and your team are doing is getting recognized. Being aware of how your environment works is important to your success and the success of your team.
At the end of my book, “First Time Managers Start Here”, I quote Jim Autry who says:
“Indeed make something of yourself, try your best to get to the top if that’s where you want to go, but know the more people you try to take along with you, the faster you’ll get there and the longer you’ll stay there.”
You get to decide whether a career in management is right for you. What do you think?
