Dual Leadership

A manager is a manager is a manager???

In my career I actually never had a subject matter expert as my manager who could also function as a mentor for me. But I was under the impression that manager is manager and if you report to them they are your go-to.

Instead, most managers I’ve had gave me free rein for many of my topics and the reporting line was much more of a status update with some disciplinary sprinkles rather than a genuine manager-managee relationship.

Leadership, the

Most companies today identify that there is heavy growth potential in their leadership, with the focus on professional skills development and enablement of team members. Why is that the case? For decades the manager model was THE ultimate career model. You are good at what you do? So you need to become a manager and manage others in doing exactly that.

Research shows that this can be a fallacy. Many individual contributors who excel at their job make awful managers. This happens not because they don’t have the talent or knack for it, but because they are thrown into a role that requires good preparation and a set of coaching tools. Some thrive, others fail. Or, in the worst case scenario, those reporting to the new managers leave the company as they are looking for better enablement elsewhere.