People Manager is easily the most important role impacting Culture, Morale and Contributions within organizations. I have been saying this for a while now, and this chart below by Monte Pedersen accentuates my point.
A good Reflection Question is Do you Really want to be a People Manager? Unfortunately unimaginative and predictable career paths point mostly in the direction of Leading Others/ teams as the next move career wise. While this may appear to be a step up, it entails a set of skills that are very different and Infact rare.
-the ability to groom, train, teach, mentor and to not having to micro-manage to get work done through others..
-an inherent need to lead and manage the performance of others which is never easy, but enjoying the challenge of working together and building teams..
-an ability to manage self and others for timely deliveries – managing performance, productivity to deliver in time is a key skill to manage teams.
-the maturity to manage team conflict and possible conflict with others outside the team, as the complexity of the task increases
-the ability to manage a variety of situations and unpredictable challenges, and enjoying the process of resolving these by using different mechanisms to influence to resolve problems
In our work at Capstone we find the People Manager role to be distinctive l, requiring Assessment and Development to plan careers that are distinctively suited to existing opportunities, with the Personas validated through our Development Studios.
The aspiration to grow cannot be mixed up with force fitting everyone in a ladder movement that maybe suboptimal to the individual’s capabilities and the organization’s requirement.
