You Want to Do WHAT? A Development Dilemma

I work with a manager who believes wholeheartedly in developing her people. She regularly talks with them about their careers and their short- and long-term goals.  She provides on-the-job opportunities for them to grow and learn. She’s got a very loyal and happy bunch of employees, but recently she hit a snag. A Software Engineer said he wanted to be a manager. She was surprised for two reasons.  First, he’d never mentioned this before, and second, she honestly didn’t think he’d be great manager or enjoy it. She wondered how to handle this skill and aspiration mismatch.

Here are some options we came up with.

•    Ask him why he wants to be a manager. What’s his motivation? If it’s money or advancement, is there another path for these?

•    Explain the strengths he’ll need and the responsibilities of a manager. Ask him to talk about where he’s demonstrated these strengths and if he’s really interested in these types of responsibilities. Tell him honestly that she hasn’t seen him demonstrate the strengths and suggest that she get informal feedback from people he thinks might have seen it.

•    Offer to have him coach a new hire to see how he likes the development side of management.

•    Let him shadow her (when it’s appropriate) so he can more fully experience the role.

The manager agreed to try a few of these and then reassess the situation. Above all she wanted to be sure her direct report felt heard, taken seriously, and given the chance to try – all of which is at the heart of successful employee development!