Why Do You Want to Manage People When You Don’t Have Time to Do Your Own Work?
The tradeoff between creating and helping others create
One of the best pleasures in life for many people is crossing of an item on their todo list. The physical act of crossing something off with a pen or pencil brings so much pleasure to my life that I often write out lists in notebooks, just for that added bonus. I’m not an obsessive list maker, but every now and then the mood strikes me and I dig out a notepad.
This is one of the beauties of being an individual contributor at a company. Nothing was more simple and pure than when I was a software engineer working on a new product. Every two weeks we would start our Agile sprint planning and had a clearly defined scope of work to accomplish. Each day I had the opportunity to talk about what I did the day before, what I was going to do that day, and what challenges were in my way. Yes, there were often technical hurdles, but the problem solving can make crossing the item off the list even more rewarding!
So what’s the problem?
For much of my adult life, I have been saying that I want to help people. Yet somehow, I always fall into the trap of thinking that I need to be a leader of people in order to help others. But that simply isn’t true, because doing individual tasks as described before can be a tremendous help to others. In fact, there is a lot of good work being done by non-profits all over the world who have many employees contributing their tasks.
It wasn’t until later that I realized my saying of helping people was too broad. In reality, I want to help people through direct growth. What I mean by that is I want to coach and mentor others, so we can all improve and help the world. I know this still sounds vague, but what it boils down to is my desire to lead others in a way that they have greater successes. While this activity can be achieved through personalized conversations or mentorship, I do have the selfish desire to be a leader within my organization. Henceforth, I needed to become a people leader!
What I wasn’t prepared for
There are two types of people leaders, that I’ve been exposed to. Those that purely manage people and their resourcing (i.e., functional managers in a strong matrix organization) and working managers (i.e., managing others while also having task involvement). The first time I managed people I was in the role of the latter, where I have direct reports that I’m responsible for developing and I am the lead on the project. I was used to being a lead on a project, but now there are people reporting into me and it creates and awkward transition.
I absolutely failed at this transition to people leadership! Because of the heavy project work that was on my plate, I ineffectively managed my team and did not help them succeed. This was very hard for me, because as I stated, I want to help coach other people and watch them succeed. With hindsight being 20/20, I can see now that I was so eager that I took on too much. I’m sure many of you are thinking that I didn’t delegate properly to my team, I struggle to believe that. Unfortunately, my team was operating at 50% capacity and in an effort to prevent their burnout, I shielded them from excessive work. Whether that decision was right or not has yet to be seen.
How to improve
With those learnings behind me, I have learned a few key items for the future:
- Project work can be completed by many people. If additional resources are needed, fight for them!
- When your team is going through a challenging time, find one thing per week that you can do as a leader to improve their lives. It doesn’t have to solve world hunger, but even the small efforts mean a lot.
- Focus on being a leader and coach for people, not a manager of their work. This is something that is always preached in leadership development, but it’s 100% true. It can be a difficult task to accomplish but seeing your team grow is worth it.
Have you been in this situation before and have other takeaways? If so, please leave them in the comments as I would love to learn from your experiences!
If crossing items off your to do list everyday is what brings you the most pleasure, then you might not want to move into management. On the other hand, if you want to help teams of people grow and lead in the future, then management can be rewarding. Generally speaking, the actions of managers when it comes to coaching has a longer time constant (i.e., it will take longer to bear the fruits of your labor). This is something I learned from one of my great managers and am witnessing it first hand.
Whatever path you end up choosing, make sure it aligns with what you want to accomplish in life and brings you pleasure. If it is management, beware of the transition because it can bite you!
