By Mike Hoban
In the world of athletics, only the naive or the uninformed would suggest that the best athletes make the best coaches. There are different skill sets and motivations involved. Why then, do we in business, on an all too regular basis, make the error of thinking that the best individual contributors - the best accountants, engineers or nurses - will make good managers? Some do, of course, but many don’t, and in fact some make incompetent and unhappy managers, meaning we not only “lose” our best individual contributor (IC), we compound the problem by jeopardizing the performance and the morale of the work group he/she now leads. It’s shooting ourselves in both feet.
We’ve known for decades about that fallacy, yet like a bad habit we can’t seem to overcome, or that we choose to ignore, the practice remains. And because of limited and plateaued career paths for ICs, many of the promising ones enter the management track because it’s the only game in town. Or they go somewhere else where they feel more appreciated as a highly respected contributor.
Organizations need to stop assuming their best performers will be their next generation of leaders. Here are some steps they can take instead:
- Expand the IC “Track” - Create extended technical ladders/professional sequences to provide pay and recognition for “mastery level” ICs that are more in parity to those of the managerial track. In investment firms, the star traders almost always earn more – sometimes far more - than do their managers;
- Don’t Assume…- Before putting a well regarded IC’s name onto the high potential list in a talent review, ensure that someone has had a conversation with him/her to see whether he/she is even interested in a management track. A recent DDI study found a whopping 61% of ICs surveyed indicated they had no aspirations to become supervisors or managers. Too often it’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell;
- Provide trial assignments - Provide temporary management-lite assignments (like handling some quasi-management duties while the supervisor is on vacation) for ICs to give them a taste of what management work feels like;
- Assess and Test - Provide assessments or simulations to ICs so they can experience management work and so the organization can also identify individuals who score well and have the motivation to explore the management track.
Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).
Excellent points, Mike about a real problem. In my experience, there are no tests or simulations that come within hailing distance of what you call "trial assignments" when it comes to providing an adequate assessment of the potential of an IC for a management role.
But that needs to be coupled with an assessment of the person's ability to do management work. We can teach communications skills, but we can't make a new manager enjoy helping others succeed. We can conduct assessment centers, but they don't tell us if a manager can and will make decisions or confront sub-par performance or awful behavior in real life.
Alternative tracks are important, but so is an view that moving along them is as much a promotion as shifting to management work. And it's vital that we support an IC when he or she becomes a manager, especially during the transition period, and that we allow him or her to return to IC status if they don't work out as managers.
Posted by: Wally Bock | 12/30/2009 at 06:32 AM