Congratulations on being an exceptional programmer. Here are two performance issues, somebody who wants a pay rise and a team member who has just burst into tears during your 121.

Okay, I jest, but it’s a slightly strange reward when you think about it, yet we see it all the time. The best engineer becomes a Senior Engineer with a team under them, the brilliant artist becomes the Art Lead, and the person who can solve practically any technical problem suddenly spends half their week managing people. Sometimes that’s exactly what they want, but sometimes they’ve ended up there because management is the only visible route upwards, or simply because the business needed somebody to take on the team.

Being technically brilliant and being a brilliant people manager are two very different skill sets, so there’s a question businesses should probably ask more often before making that promotion - does this person actually want to manage people and do they have the necessary skills? Not whether they want the salary increase or more senior title, but whether they genuinely want to coach people, give feedback, have difficult conversations, deal with performance issues and spend less time doing the thing they were brilliant at and loved doing in the first place.

If they don't, that doesn't mean they lack ambition. They may simply want to become exceptionally good at their craft, which is why businesses need career paths that don't make management the inevitable destination for anyone who wants to progress. A strong individual contributor route can allow somebody to deepen their expertise, own more complex work, mentor others and influence technical direction without becoming responsible for somebody else's performance, wellbeing and holiday requests. That route needs proper parity in pay, status and opportunity though; if all the impressive titles and salary increases sit on the management side, people will understandably end up managing teams whether they particularly want to or not which could ultimately cause the business further problems down the line and also send that employee's career down a path they'd never intended on.

Career mapping and succession planning can help businesses get ahead of this rather than waiting until a management vacancy appears and everybody slowly turns towards the most senior technical person. Talk to people about where they actually want their careers to go, identify those who are interested in people management and give them opportunities to develop those skills before handing them a team. That matters because genuinely good people managers can be difficult to find in technically focused industries. Plenty of people joined games because they wanted to make games, not because they had a burning desire to discuss performance objectives and mediate disagreements about communication styles. Businesses therefore need to get much clearer about what good management actually looks like for them. We spend huge amounts of time defining technical competencies, yet sometimes the criteria for becoming responsible for other people's careers seems to amount to “has been here a while and is great at delivering what’s required”. That's not okay.

It's important to consider what the skills gaps are within your current management and leadership teams, and what support would somebody need before stepping into one of those roles. And when somebody does choose management, please don't just give them some direct reports and assume they'll work the rest out. Nobody needs managers to become employment lawyers, but they do need enough understanding to recognise when they're entering territory where they should stop and ask HR for help. Mishandling a flexible working request, a health disclosure, an allegation of harassment or a performance issue can create genuine risk for the business remarkably quickly. Then HR gets the message nobody particularly enjoys receiving: "Quick question, we have this situation with X and we’re now at the stage where it’s not going to work out. Can you help?" By that point, it can be much harder for HR to help turn things around because conversations have often already taken place, positions have become entrenched and, in some cases, things have been said or done that have created unnecessary risk or inadvertently escalated the situation. The lesson here is a fairly simple one - managers should be bringing HR into the conversation early when concerns start to emerge, rather than waiting until they’ve already decided how the story ends. 

Managers need training, support and somewhere to go when they aren't sure, because the alternative isn't just legal risk. Poorly handled people issues lead to frustrated teams, problems being left to fester and good employees deciding they'd rather work somewhere else. #

Meanwhile, the brilliant technical person you promoted may also be miserable because you've taken them away from the work they loved and put them into a job they never really wanted, so they start looking elsewhere.

None of this means your best technical people shouldn't become managers. Some will be exceptional at it and genuinely love developing other people. The important bit is giving them a choice. Management should be a career path, not the prize everybody receives for getting really good at something else. Give people different routes, understand where your future management talent actually is and properly develop the people who choose that path. Your best programmer might become a brilliant people lead, but they might also become an exceptional technical specialist who gets to spend their career doing more of what they're genuinely brilliant at. Both are progression.

If your career pathway currently ends with "and then you become a manager" and your succession plan is essentially crossing your fingers that somebody suitable is around when you need them for your Senior Leadership Team, it might be time for a rethink. At Fresh Seed we can help with career mapping, workforce and succession planning that gives your people genuine routes to grow while making sure the business is building the skills it’s actually going to need. Reach out to us at info@freshseed.co.uk for a chat.