Not All Promotions Are Progress: The Case for Conscious Career Choices
How to Avoid the Trap of Becoming a "Leader by Default"
Welcome to Coaching Contemplations, a newsletter full of ideas and insights that will help you equip yourself with game-changing strategies in leadership and coaching to succeed at work and achieve your goals.
Before we dive in, here are three questions for you:
+ Do you want to make a bigger impact?
+ Do you need a new perspective on a challenge you're struggling with?
+ Are you starting a new role and want to make a positive impact and quickly establish credibility?
Why do you want to manage?
Most people manage their careers haphazardly, jumping from role to role as new opportunities arise.
Being more purposeful about your career will reap dividends as you progress and help you to be happier and more satisfied with your work.
A great starting point is if you want to be a manager, ask yourself why.
I still remember being asked this question for the first time. I was deep in the process of interviewing for my first job after graduating from university. This interview was for an entry-level application programmer role at IBM on the south coast of England. The interview process was going well (I would eventually be offered a job that I subsequently declined to take up), so I was inevitably asked, "Where do I see myself in x years' time?" As a final-year physics undergraduate, I had no idea other than that I didn't want to work in a laboratory environment. So, I made some passing references to managing a team. His reaction was priceless, "Why would you want to do something like that?" I honestly didn't know. It was an automatic response, something that I felt obligated to say. And yet, thirty years before I wrote this book, I didn't have the first idea of what managing a team involved.
To paraphrase Ron Warren from his book Personality at Work,
"In our society, there is tremendous pressure to move up in the organisation. Ambitious junior and senior executives seek out new challenges, increased compensation, and the status and validation of career growth. Yet, many people in their current roles believe that moving up into higher leadership roles would create unwanted additional stress and pressure - but feel compelled to move up."
He suggests asking yourself several questions before making a decision:
What is it that you really want?
What do you think you will achieve by rising in your organisation?
What drives this need?
How will your life substantially differ if you continue to rise in your organisation?
Where do you derive your greatest satisfaction at work?
What kind of life do you really want?
These generative questions are a powerful way to help people avoid "the default position—moving up merely because it seems the next logical step in a career."
The author goes on to say,
"Many ascend to leadership roles because it is the next logical step. These are leaders by default. Unfortunately, most people jump at an opportunity to move up to roles offering higher status and compensation, considering it a no-brainer. Few of us consider accepting a promotion as a conscious choice. Promotions into managerial positions are simply a natural and logical consequence of attaining tenure and doing good work."
There are signs that this attitude may be changing.
The recruitment company Robert Walter's 2024 survey was titled "Conscious unbossing—52% of Gen-Z professionals don't want to be middle managers." They received over two thousand responses from white-collar professionals across the UK who responded to questions such as, "Do you expect to have to take on a middle management role to progress in your chosen career?" and "What aspect of middle management do you find least attractive?" with a broad thumbs down to entering a managerial role:
52% of Gen-Z professionals don't want to be middle managers.
72% of Gen-Z would choose an individual route to progression over managing others.
63% of professionals think senior professionals value middle management more than their younger peers.
It's not just the UK. The US is getting in on the act too.
Business Insider's article "The End of American Careerism" reports that "42% of respondents in the United States say they don't want a promotion because they're happy where they are."
It will be interesting to see whether these surveys indicate a more permanent change in career climbing ambition in the wider white-collar workforce or just a short-lived phenomenon. However, the typical person I work with is very ambitious. Many work in front-office, fee-earning, and client-facing roles within investment banks and law and consulting firms. They are more often drivers of their careers rather than passengers. They get satisfaction from making things happen, feel a strong sense of ownership, and set demanding standards not just for their projects and teams but also for their careers. That isn't to say that some of them don't accidentally end up managing teams. They do. It usually is because they didn't spend the time to carry out appropriate due diligence earlier in their careers when the choice to remain an individual producer or become directly responsible for others first arose.
The best way to recover from a false start is to avoid one in the first place. So, if you want to be a manager or have your first opportunity to manage others, you can start by asking yourself why - what are the likely rewards, and what are the downsides?
📫 - A quote that I am currently pondering
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Max Planck
🧾 - An absorbing and insightful (short) read
Hogan - What We Know About Leadership - LINK
This article starts, "The fundamental question in human affairs is, who shall rule?" We think the fundamental question is, "Who should rule?"
🤔 - If you did have the answer to this question, what would it be?
Are you a driver or a passenger?