Develop the Leaders, Kicking and Screaming
A HBR blog post entitled “Develop the Leaders You’ve Been Overlooking”, by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, argues that in every organization there are de facto leaders, the valued and respected contributors with deep knowledge and experience, who ought to be sought out and developed. Seems logical – but lack of opportunity is rarely the what keeps these people where they are.
We need to understand the people we manage, especially the most valuable ones, and respect that their perspective may be very different from ours. Every organization has star contributors – in IT we often call these folks the gurus – but more often than not they are not managers because they have chosen not to be. Zenger and Folkman give four reasons for persuading the “overlooked” to become managers, but if they understood their point of view they wouldn’t bother.
Defining “Success” – Different Standards Apply
Firstly, they argue, promotion to management will make the stars feel valued. For the most part these people already feel valued. They’re the go-to guys in the organization, esteemed by their co-workers, and looked to when advice is needed. When assignments are being handed out and teams assembled their counsel is sought and heeded; but they want neither the trappings nor responsibilities of management, they just want to apply their expertise. The only way they might feel undervalued is in the paycheck, but more about that later.
It Smells Like the Peter Principle.
Reason two is that retention is better when people feel they are progressing. That may be true, but many people with a profound technical expertise don’t consider a promotion to a management role as progress. Because the step supposedly signals advancement and is the only way to get a raise they may feel pressured to accept it. In reality it means that they are being asked to do a new job requiring different skills. They may not have talents in that area; they certainly don’t have the same level of expertise; and they’re being asked to leave behind the work that they love and have built their reputation doing.
This was a hot topic in the Canadian Forces back when I was serving in the Communications and Electronics branch. We felt that we were losing valuable skills by promoting expert technicians out of the front line operations, communications centers and workshops where they could apply their experience. On the one hand, it is unfair to deny someone a promotion, and the pay and status that comes with it, because they are too valuable where they are; but it’s no more reasonable to oblige your experts to take a higher rank where they cease to enjoy their work and you cease to benefit from their expertise. The Forces experimented with dual career paths, in which technicians who didn’t wish to rise through the ranks would still be acknowledged for their technical leadership with pay increases akin to those due from a promotion. Other organizations take a similarly enlightened view. I know a woman at a rating agency (where gurus abound) who is unquestionably a leader in her department, but who after extensive management training and formal coaching, elected to return to the more academic role that she enjoys. Her company supported her decision, but in others this would have been a career killer.
The fact is that people are told promotion equals success, but it’s not true for everyone. Successful doctors find themselves pushing hospital paperwork as punishment for demonstrating surgical talent; lawyers with superior legal minds make partner and find themselves running after new clients. Many people would rather do the thing they trained for, enjoy and are good at, than become a less-able manager of people like them. They do it because we tell them they should and they’ll make more money; but those aren’t good reasons to take on a critical role in an organization. Making sure that there is recognition in the pay packet for someone on the guru-not-manager track is probably the biggest challenge, but many organizations that depend on experts are working to strike the right balance.
Developing Skills
The third reason offered is that management opportunities increase future successes. The management skills these people develop will translate to the technical aspects of their job. Okay, we can agree that it is generally useful to augment EQ, team work and communications abilities. But you don’t need to make someone a manager for that. If your organization needs to develop these skills, it would be more efficient to simply provide some training.
Performers Don’t Have To Be Asked
Finally, Zenger and Folkman point out that some of these hidden leaders could become excellent managers. That’s possible, and it’s also conceivable that some of these bright, talented and respected assets in your organization have been so happy where they are that they’ve simply never thought about advancing on a management track. In that case a little outreach would benefit the organization. But in most circumstances the route to a management career is no secret. The people who are interested in management will gravitate to it; and if they truly are the stars with superior skills and experience it would be hard to hold them back.
More likely the best individual contributors in your organization are in their roles because they’ve opted for them; if they’re that good and they wanted another role, they’d get it. We do them and our organizations no favors by trying to force everyone into the molds that we ourselves find comfortable. It’s okay to be have different ambitions (and Forbes agrees with me on this). Managers naturally feel that to bestow a management role upon someone is a reward, but plenty of smart, creative people don’t see it that way.
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