Not everyone wants to be a manager. Some people love doing what they’re good at; they’re functional experts who have worked hard to develop their craft. They’re probably known as one of the best in the organisation at this ‘thing’. They might even have a reputation that stretches beyond your business. They want (and deserve) progression, development, promotion and all the good things. But the only viable route for these things is through people leadership.

This can cause all sorts of trouble, not only for them but also for the teams they’re leading and, ultimately, the organisation.

Here’s what I see too often:

The organisation recognises the expertise of this person who is usually the best in their team at the thing. They might be the best salesperson, or the young gun lawyer or the engineer who can fix anything. So, popular logic (or the powers that be) suggests: “this person is awesome at this thing; let’s make them a leader of people doing this thing so they can teach others how to an be expert at this thing too.”

Unfortunately this conflates strength in domain knowledge and skill in people leadership.

Promoting functional experts isn’t a bad thing in itself. Some functional experts can and do make wonderful people leaders. But there are three common traps which leaders of these experts and their organisations make:

1. The direct manager of the functional expert hasn’t had enough conversations with this person over time about what they really want to do (as opposed to what they feel they should do for career progression). There haven’t been ongoing conversations to explore this person’s strengths or the different ways that person could work from their strengths more over time.
2. The organisation has not been purposeful enough in creating viable career pathways for promotion and development outside of people leadership. Or maybe they have, but when you compare pay, perks, prestige or cultural messages about these alternative paths, they don’t stack up.
3. They assume that because someone is good at people leadership (or could be), that’s enough. I have led some leaders who are really brilliant leaders, but they just don’t enjoy it. Don’t conflate a skill with a strength (remember a strength is when you are good at it AND you enjoy doing it).

Doing it better

The best organisations recognise and nurture their functional experts who don’t want to be people leaders. They create attractive and sustainable career pathway alternatives to people leadership. They recognise that you don’t need to be a people manager to be a leader. And they treat individual experts in their fields as leaders – because that’s what they are. These organisations showcase functional experts and their achievements and purposefully endorse alternative paths to people management as a great route for career progression.

What do you think? Have you got an experience of your own to share? Or is your organisation doing great things in this space? I’d love to hear your thoughts…