What horrible thing did you do to deserve getting promoted like this? You were showing such promise; a great performer! One of the best. Now you’ve been promoted to a Team Leader or Manager.
My condolences.
It has been my experience, particularly of late, that top performers as individual contributors find that their perceived only avenue for higher salary or better benefits is the path that takes them to managing people. So what? Well, this is a very different skill to being a technical specialist, and there are few companies who treat this as something that needs support and coaching.
That leaves great technical people now feeling lost at sea with the weight of expected continued brilliant performance in an entirely new and unfamiliar environment. My favourite analogy for this problem is that you’ve hired a superstar carpenter. They’ve built a terrific cabinet for you, so now you’ve placed them, with much fanfare, into the role of ballerina. Strangely, they struggle to stand on point and look crap in a tutu. (Now there’s a visual for you!)
You see the measures of success are very different as a leader of people than for a brilliant team member. The way in which you achieve those measures are also very different. Without support, particularly coaching, these previously happy high achievers are now left in a world of disappointment; their own and those around them. They are basically set up to fail. The organisational behavioural term most used here is derailment. Someone on the fast track to success has now found themselves shoved off the rails. Many choose to leave rather than face the ignominy of retracing their career steps seemingly in reverse to get back on those rails.
It is critical that companies look to what they can do to support and foster broader development in their people. Rather than just look to the balance sheet look at the investment in skills and resilience for your team that brings loyalty as well as emotional and intellectual investment in your brand and outcomes.
Invest in business, you win some, you lose some. Invest in people; coach them for success and you’ll rarely regret it.
