Many lives many paths
Many years back I had a direct report who was phenomenal at work. You could give him any project, any stakeholder to manage and he would do a fantastic job of it. If there was a difficult, he was the go to guy.
As he transitioned from an individual contributor to a project manager and a client manager he continued to do stellar work. The clients loved him. Many team members wanted to work with him on projects as they felt their learning curve would be great working with this individual, even though it often meant higher expectations from them and often longer working hours.
As the years went by, the reportee grew on to take on people management responsibilities (the typical career path). He was allocated a team to lead. Now his responsibilities were twofold: lead some projects, and groom & lead the team. This when things started to go south. While he continued to do stellar project work, the team was disengaged.
As we collected feedback, two things came to light. The person was so used to being in the 'solver' that everytime a great project or org. initiative opportunity came, he would volunteer himself (vs. other from the team). Of course, he did so as he believed he was best placed to handle those opportunities (rather than consciously trying to keep the opportunities away from the team).
From the team's perspective though they felt they were competing with him for opportunities. The second degree effect of this and his busy schedule was that he never had the time to invest in grooming his people. If there was a problem he would jump in and solve it. From his standpoint he didn't need much hand holding, so he didn't understand why others needed it.
We worked with him for a couple of quarters sharing feedback, coaching him on managing the team. The was some improvement, but it was marginal. He was losing his drive to work as he felt that despite his best efforts he wasn't being celebrated the way he was used to.
It didn't look like a situation that was salvageable in its current form. We finally told him that he will need to give up his team management responsibilities. I had expected a strong push back, but to my surprise he was elated. His only question was "will this impact my career growth". And of course the answer was no, as long as you can continue to add value to the organisation.
Over the years, he transitioned to one of the best project managers and individual contributor, and continued to develop new capabilities for the firm. He eventually moved onto a front ending role with the firm.
The lesson for me from this episode was that not every person who excels at their work can or even wants to be a team manager. We need to build avenues for our people to grow, and each individual is unique in what they bring to the fore. Our job as leaders is to place people in roles that amplify their strengths.
