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Why Many Star Performers Are Wrong For Management Roles

This article is more than 9 years old.

Brittany’s bright, ambitious and reliable. She’s an asset to your team, you can’t afford to lose her, and you know that she deserves chances to grow.

But should she necessarily be promoted to a line manager position? This is one of the thorniest sorts of questions in organizational life.

Skilled people tend to get promoted to the corner offices or deluxe cubicles of management—yet management requires a special set of skills that are often different from the skills that earned the promotion in the first place.

Think about how star players often don’t become star coaches. Magic Johnson led the Los Angeles Lakers to five NBA championships as a player. But after just a few weeks as head coach of the Lakers in 1994, he gave up on managing others, exiting with a 5-11 record. By contrast, Phil Jackson averaged a quiet and humble 6.7 points a game as an NBA player, but won 11 championships as a coach, because he knew better than anyone how to shepherd outsized egos and personalities.

Smart organizations promote people into management who are likely to be good at management. Weaker organizations promote people into management who are good at what they do but not necessarily good at supervising others or developing budgets or handling the minutiae of management.

Before you redraw the org chart and turn terrific foot soldiers into beleaguered commanders, there are two major categories of questions you should be considering:

1. Are they too nice … or too tough? Look for a potential manager who can achieve a golden mean between those extremes.

I’m using Brittany as a generic example of a female or male management prospect, and I don’t want to get into the touchy recent controversies regarding whether strong women are judged more harshly than strong men in the workplace. Suffice it to say overly tough people of all 50+ Facebook gender options can turn an office into a toxic dump of squandered human possibility.

At the same time, too many managers, male and female, are just too nice. Their superiors bring them into management knowing that they couldn’t swat at a tarantula even if it were about to slay the CEO. This gets everyone into trouble eventually. The manager often can’t make the deep budget cuts that might give a struggling department a chance to reinvent itself, or can’t fire an incompetent employee who’s wrecking productivity or morale.

It's important to ask prospects for the management track how they tend to make unpleasant decisions in which there is no “win-win” scenario (and ask them how they make those decisions in other parts of their lives). Ask them how they tend to referee disputes.

If they’re near the golden mean along the nice-to-mean spectrum, they have a much better chance of handling the messier aspects of management, without collateral damage. However, if they insist there's always a win-win solution for every problem, be wary and look into the second major area of concern:

2. Are they too idealistic … or too cynical in their view of other people?

Here again you want a golden mean, in the form of a person who knows management isn’t just about yelling at others, but also that it’s not about honeysuckle petals descending from the heavens as subordinates all attain simultaneous enlightenment.

There are too many motivational phrases like “Don’t manage people, inspire them.”  When this proves difficult, managers go to seminars where experts tell them, “Well, have you really tried inspiring them? Read my book for tips.”

But followers often just don’t get inspired, and you have to lead and evaluate them anyway. Think about it: Millions attend churches and temples and mosques each week. They hear timeless wisdom that’s said to reflect divine truth. But they don’t often come out ready to change the world; often, they break into cliques and fret about the damage being caused by other cliques.

So be wary of a management candidate who is so naïve as to suppose that he or she can do what the gods can’t seem to get done on a regular basis. Good managers have a healthy perspective about what they can and can't expect from mere mortals, and they bring the right mix of empathy and accountability to the task of managing them.

Smart companies can find ways to promote or recognize or reward certain star performers without pushing them into roles that may stifle them or those around them. The best perks at a company should be less narrowly bestowed upon line managers (but this is easier said than done, considering that it’s management that decides who gets the perks).

Studies show that many workers want rewards that being a line manager doesn’t necessarily offer. Some want recognition for their output more than they want money or authority. Many want flexibility or autonomy more than power. Some just want a better parking spot or office space (or telecommuting space) without the headaches of supervising others.

Properly recognizing innovators, creative freelancers and brilliant independent types can help reduce the need to push non-managers into management. That alone will improve the quality of leadership in our organizations.  

Rob Asghar is the author of the newly released Leadership Is Hellwith all proceeds supporting programs to increase college access for under-served youth in the Los Angeles area.