Advancement and promotion are central goals that our culture values. There is no surer way to get a lot of positive feedback on LinkedIn than to post your ascension into a new role. And many people new to the workplace look forward to getting the respect, higher pay, and other perks that come from moving forward in your career.
In many organizations, though, the pathway to advancement ultimately runs through some kind of people management. Those role require that you spend a significant amount of time monitoring and improving the performance of other people and tracking the progress of key projects.
So, how do you know if management is the right path for you?
Where is your joy?
The first significant question you need to ask yourself is what you like doing. If you’re not currently in a management role, then chances are there is a technical or skill component to the work you’re doing. Your success right now depends on the execution of that set of skills whether it involves sales, customer service, data analysis, or computer programming.
If you love doing that work and it make your days fly by, you might not be ready to move into management. Once you get a management role, you will spend a lot less time (or perhaps no time at all) doing that thing you love. Indeed, one reason why some companies (like Microsoft) have developed technical career ladders to support career advancement for people who want to continue using their skills rather than moving into management.
If you notice that your motivation to engage in technical and skilled work is flagging, then you might find a change of pace invigorating. Your expertise will support your effectiveness, because you will deeply understand the work your team does, but you will have a different set of challenges that will occupy your time.
What skills are you excited to learn?
When you move forward in your career, there are always more things to learn. Every year around the time you do your yearly evaluation, you should be thinking about the skills to pick up the following year. That may involve taking a seminar, a certificate, or even considering another degree.
When you think about the skills you’d like to learn (as opposed to the ones you have to learn), what do you think of? If you are excited primarily about technical skills that will improve your performance in your current role, that is a good sign that your heart is still in the daily work you’re doing.
If you’re interested in new people skills, though, then perhaps your interests are shifting more toward management. As a manager, the problems you’ll focus on are going to be people problems. You’ll want to start developing expertise in that area even before you start a management role so that you’re not scrambling to understand the people you work with at the same time as you are understanding the rest of your role.
How do you manage stress?
Lots of work has some stress in it. But, moving into management has additional stressors. You’re now responsible for the team, and not just your own work. You have to provide constructive feedback on other people’s work. You may also have to fire people.
The responsibility for the success of the team is hard to bear. It’s helpful for you to know how you handle this kind of stress. Are you able to leave it behind at the end of the workday, or does it follow you home?
If you are the kind of person who brings stress home with you, then try to develop methods to separate yourself from work at difficult times. Perhaps you can exercise at the end of the workday or take up meditation. If you can’t leave that stress behind, though, then you may decide a management role isn’t right for you.
Don’t do it for the money
People are often tempted to take on management roles because they can lead to an increase in pay. The assumption is that the raise will outweigh the negative aspects of the job. That’s rarely the case.
At first when you get a raise, you are just happy to have the extra money. Before too long, though, you adapt to the pay level you have, and the joy of the job itself becomes the central part of your satisfaction with work. If you really don’t like having to supervise others and motivating the team, then the additional money will likely not be worth it. You’re better off focusing on career paths that will enable you to take on more responsibility while continuing to use your technical skills.