Individual Contributor vs. People Manager

Early in my career, I aspired to develop skills and become an “expert” in an area of technology.  I soon found an affinity for database management and began to dig in to deepen my knowledge of both the technology and the popular products of the day.  While I may not have become an expert, I did get involved in outlining strategy for database products at my company, contributed to some industry standards such as performance benchmarking, and even published a few articles in the trade press.

This expertise helped me to gain internal recognition at my company and as a result I had some modest advancement at work.  Soon after I was faced with the decision that many technical professionals face.  Do I continue to deepen my technical skills or consider a move into “management”? 

Over the holidays I spoke with a young man who is early in his career and deeply technical.  He has an engineering degree and has always been highly talented technically while growing up.  He has been doing well at his job which is a great fit for his skillset and education.  While catching up he surprised me by saying he wanted to talk about possibly taking on a new role to lead a team at work, and not being as hands on anymore. 

Leaning back on my own experience I was happy to share my thoughts with him.  It’s great that his leadership has confidence in him to take on a role in management.  Had he really thought about whether that’s what he wanted?  Is he ready to shift from being the technical expert to the team leader, and perhaps to not be doing the actual technical work every day?  Does he feel ready to take on the role of team leader and what skills does he need to develop to be successful?

A shift such as this from individual contributor to manager/leader offers much promise in terms of advancement within the organization and the compensation potential that comes with that.  It is in my opinion, however, one of the most important decisions a person can make in their career.  Fundamentally they will need to be comfortable with moving from “doing the work” to “directing and guiding the work”, and that involves developing people skills such as coaching, inspiring, communicating, and redirecting team members to achieve an outcome or vision.  While it’s certainly possible to remain a “technical leader” it does require letting go of some of the work that got you to this point, and you probably enjoyed doing.  We’ve all known people who were great individual contributors but didn’t have the skill sets or desire to successfully transition into managers.

In my case, I chose to make this transition which I think was the right one for me.  However, it required years of commitment, additional education, and jumping into roles well beyond my comfort zone where I was not the “expert” and had to earn the respect of the team to truly be accepted as the leader.  That perhaps, is one of the biggest challenges for a new leader when you are asked to lead in an area for which others on your team have the domain expertise, but they require your leadership to move the business forward.  The team may question why you’ve been brought in, and what you know about “their business”, and why they should follow your direction?  This requires the new leader to dig in and do their homework to learn the business and bring the team along with them over time to achieve new heights.  With an effective yet humble leader, this scenario can be mutually beneficial and can often result in growth for both the team as well as the leader’s capabilities.

I’ve also known other folks with deep technical talent that made the opposite choice.  While they may have developed into great managers, they recognized their true passion was doing technical work and remaining hands on in their career.  Most of these folks were considered subject matter experts and relied upon heavily to solve the most complex problems we faced.  They realized great career success in their technical path and should be lauded for recognizing and being true to their passion, rather than believing they needed to move “into management” to get ahead.  They defined success their own way and achieved happiness by doing what they enjoyed.

I’m sure many of you have made or faced similar choices one way or the other, and I’d love to hear about them.

Until next time, Steve.