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Transcript
Hey everyone, in the last episode we talked about how your motive matters- one of selfishness or service and how sometimes people do it because of their career so they can move up and move forward.
One problem we have though within companies sometimes though that helps perpetuate this problem that can hurt the people we have that move into leadership positions and make it where we have leaders who aren’t good or managers who aren’t good leaders is because sometimes management is the only way to move up. And that’s sometimes what’s expected. If you want to move up then you need to be a manager.
And that’s some faulty thinking because, first of all, sometimes people think that if you did good as a salesperson, then you’ll do good as a sales manager. If you were a good engineer, then you’ll do good managing engineers. Or if you’re good at graphic design, you’ll be good at managing graphic designers.
But that’s just a false mentality because those are two separate skills. Those are two separate jobs. Being able to make graphics or do the work of engineering is completely different than managing and leading. Those are two separate skills.
That’s something you have to want to do. You need to want to be in that position to do that kind of work.
The problem is sometimes that’s the only way up. The mentality is that… and the thing is, so you get these people, the only way to move up is by promotion to manager.
And then sometimes they’re not happy because they’d rather do the work itself. So instead of doing the managing and leading work, they still do the work that they should be letting their people do, getting results through them versus getting the results themselves.
And on top of that, of course, people sometimes aren’t trained on it. So that’s the only way up. So we end up getting managers who don’t want to do it in these positions just because they did good at a different position, if that makes sense. They were good at graphic design, whatever, so now they’re the manager.
That doesn’t help the situation because we just get people, more and more managers and people moving up who are just moving up because it’s about their career versus serving, versus leading and they don’t get the skills or it’s maybe something they don’t want to do, they don’t want to develop, whatever it may be, we get stuck with all about managers because of that.
So really what we need to do in our companies, and I know there’s different companies that have done this and started doing this, is create different pathways for people.
Not everybody wants to be a manager. Some people want to keep being an engineer. Some people want to keep doing graphic design. Some people just love selling.
They shouldn’t have to become a manager and change the functions and skills they need to have just to move up.
A wise thing to do, especially if you’re kind of toward the top of your company or something you can suggest to your company, whatever position you’re in, is to create different paths and tracks that people take. So management is a track, but it should be because it’s something you want to do.
But if you want to be an engineer, there should be different levels in the engineering track that you can keep moving up in engineering, good pay increases as well that you don’t have to just become a manager to get pay increase.
Does that make sense?
Create tracks for the different types of jobs so that people can keep moving forward and doing that. And if you think about it, if you have an excellent and amazing engineer who loves it and is doing it, why would you take them out of what they’re doing excellent at to put them in a position that they may not want and may not do good in?
I mean, I understand they could learn it.But they love engineering. Why is the only way up to completely change the skills they have to do? It doesn’t really make sense.
Create those separate tracks and make them where it’s a reward to stay doing what you’re doing if you love it, that you don’t feel like you have to move up to get paid more or to move in your career, that you can continue your computer programming and just become a senior or whatever it is, keep moving up as a programmer. Things of that nature.
So something to think about it, especially if you’re over a company, if we can do that more, and we start having the mentality that those two things equal, that graphic designer and manager of graphic designs are the same thing and create those separate tracks, that will help us a lot to make sure that people are moving up to manager, people who wanna do it, and learn what it takes to be a good manager and good leader.
I hope this helps, see you next time.
