I posted my thoughts to LinkedIn on this topic about a month ago and was astounded by the reception. This dilemma resonated with leaders and managers all around the world! The fact is, there are countless high-performing employees who don’t want to move into management, yet do want to continue developing in their careers. Meanwhile, others take the promotion into management anyway, thinking it’s their only option. Many of those people wind up unhappy (as do their staff)! I wanted to respond to this scenario and elaborate via video.
Here’s what I wrote in the original post:
What do you do with high performers who don’t want to move into management?
Leaders often fail to consider the next steps for this type of “rockstar” employee!
They are high performers and high culture-fits. They don’t just get the job done: They do more. They become prime candidates for promotion.
But since a supervisory or management role is the next step on the hierarchical ladder for most, rockstar staff who don’t want to manage (or whose strengths aren’t aligned with managing others) tend to find themselves stuck in their role.
Although leaders understand the value of these individual contributors, they also weigh the bottom line and tend to see a managerial promotion as the only option.
This is why so many rockstar employees quit in frustration!
Instead of losing highly valuable staff, or putting them in roles that don’t play to their strengths (or desires) for the sole sake of promotion, change how you view their trajectory.
Give rockstar individual contributors opportunities to increase their compensation and to continually improve their strengths. Give them promotions, higher salaries, and opportunities to learn, grow, and create even more value within the contributor lane.
They’ll feel great and more engaged, your managers will appreciate being able to retain them, and the results will show up on your bottom line.
What’s your take on all of this? Whether you’re in the position of promoting a valued team member or you are that talented employee, I want to hear your perspective.
Here are some thoughtful responses to my original post:
Anne chimed in with…
i was that rockstar teammate! i specifically answered the question “what do you want your next step to be?” with “NOT managing people, please”…and yet found myself managing people less than a year later, because there was no other way for me to advance. cut to a few years later, and i was heading up a 70-person team.
i got lucky—i didn’t suck at people management. in fact, being thrust into people management forced me to get good at it, and fast. but many, many other folks aren’t as lucky, and end up hating organizations they once loved.
both the stigma around “not managing anyone” and the utter lack of available paths for folks who want to specialize, dive deeper into expertise, and grow without having to lead teams are a huge detriment to professional development and career trajectory. why on earth WOULDN’T you want devoted specialists on your team that just want to do good work and get better at it every day without a managerial responsibility? orgs have a long way to go on this one.
And Andrew had this to say…
Managing and leading are two different worlds.
Managers manage resources while leaders lead people.
A rockstar who has great process oriented skills can be great manager but usually has weak leadership skills. This is why so many rockstars promoted to a manager role fail at leading.
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