I had an interesting conversation recently with a business leader about employees taking up people
management roles for the first time. Individual contributors who do well in their roles, get
promoted to people managers as a natural career progression in most companies. His concern was well founded – how do we promote people without measuring their ability to manage people?

Someone might be a great individual contributor in say a sales role, but leading a team of sales
people is a completely different ball game. Yet, this seems to be the career path open to most
people who are doing well in individual contributor roles.  How do we address this gap? The first
step for organizations is to have multiple career paths available for individuals – for example, I
know quite a few successful individual contributors who are very happy doing what they are doing and
do not want to take up a people management role. We are slowly seeing more and more companies trying to create such lateral movement options available for such people by opening up more global roles and larger portfolios to manage instead of people.

Having said that, majority of people still aspire to manage teams and be people managers in the long
run. We have had some experience in designing and delivering new manager training interventions for
clients, who have sought our assistance in equipping new managers with the right skill sets in their
journey ahead. 

If you do get an opportunity to lead a team of people, here are a set of 5 tips which could come in
handy for you : 5 Tips for New Managers