If You Want Better Leaders, You Need to Offer a Non-Manager Career Path

5 considerations for creating a non-management career path

I attended a webinar the other day that culminated, like all webinars do, in a Q&A session with the speaker. An early-in-career attendee was looking for advice about how she could make more money. “What you probably want to look for and apply to are management positions because those typically pay more,” the speaker told her.

She wasn’t wrong. Managers do typically get paid more than individuals contributors.

But compensation is far from the only consideration one should take into account when it comes to deciding whether or not to step into team leadership. And yet, the speaker made no mention of considering how this young professional wanted to spend her time at work, the type of work she wanted to be responsible for, or the role she wanted to play on the team.

The message was loud and clear — If you want to make more money, you have to be a manager. And, frankly, this is a message that is all too common across corporate America. Here’s the problem with that mentality:

If the only way you can make more money at your company is by moving into management, then you’re going to end up with a bunch of managers who have no business leading a team.

If your only motivation for taking on a leadership position is the bigger paycheck, then it’s no wonder why the American Management Association says that many managers aren’t cut out to be leaders. In fact, Gallup says just one in ten people possess the talent to manage others. Yikes.

The resulting outcome is referred to as the Peter Principle, which essentially says that a competent person in one job will be promoted to the next even when it requires completely different skills (i.e., leadership ability).

If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role, they will be incompetent at the new level, and will not be promoted again. If the person is competent in the new role, they will be promoted again and will continue to be promoted until reaching a level at which they are incompetent. Being incompetent, the individual will not qualify for promotion again, and so will remain stuck at this “Final Placement” or “Peter’s Plateau.”

As an HR leader, one of the most common things I’ve heard from newly promoted managers that I’ve worked with is, “I had no idea how much time I would have to spend on the ‘people stuff’ in this role.”

And they’re right — managing a team is a lot of work, most of which is done behind the scenes. To do the job of a leader well, you have to want to do the ‘people stuff.’ Financial motivations alone are not enough.

So, if you want a more effective leadership team guiding your organization and its people, you need to offer an alternative to management that doesn’t involve writing performance appraisals, giving promotions, or firing staff.

IT is one of the only functional areas I’ve seen that seems to do this well consistently. It’s very common for IT career paths to have two tracks; one that progresses into team leadership and another that allows tech professionals to climb the ladder as individual contributors in their (often very specific) fields of expertise.

Roles like lead developer or project lead recognize the employee’s increased scope and layer in an added expectation of influence without resulting in full-blown team leadership.

John Reed, senior executive director at Robert Half Technologies, describes these types of roles as “manager lite.” He shares that individuals in these roles are “expected to provide recommendations, direction, and solutions to the team while also maintaining a considerably hands-on function.”

But, what about the money? We all want to make more money ten years into our careers than we did when we were just one year into our careers, right?

To ensure those who are uninterested in leading a team don’t end up with a manager title, the non-management career path has to be just as lucrative as the management career path.

Here are five considerations for creating a lucrative non-management career path at your company.

1. Create ‘expert’ positions

Hyland, a global enterprise technology firm, is one company that has started making this shift by introducing ‘expert’ career paths. To do this, the company went through a career-mapping exercise that began with writing job descriptions for every role, grouping those roles into job families, and creating a competency model for every job.

The resulting career paths offer employees more visibility and influence without management responsibility.

2. Focus on freedom and flexibility

Mary Vales, senior manager of learning and organizational development at Hyland, likens these ‘expert’ positions to professors with a focus on freedom and flexibility that allows them to “take their career in the direction they want.”

She says that companies have to start by understanding these employees “don’t always want to attend meetings and deal with politics.” And who can blame them? I don’t think many of us got into leadership to attend more meetings, but it is part of the job at most companies.

3. Link work to the bottom line

Freedom and flexibility are all well and good, but too much of either could become problematic if we cannot link the work to business results.

Jeff Miller, Chief Learning Officer at Cornerstone OnDemand, says that “for individual contributors to grow in their careers, they need to increase their accountability to the business’ bottom line.”

And the approach Hyland has taken supports this, too. Vales says that ‘experts’ are “told what the customer wants, and they figure it out. We ask them what tools and resources they need to do their jobs.”

4. Redistribute recognition

Miller also notes the importance of redistributing recognition as part of an overall culture shift that doesn’t focus solely on praising and rewarding promotions into management positions.

“In sports, it’s the individual contributors that get all the publicity — the superstars. Let’s give them the spotlight in the workforce, too,” he says.

There are many ways to accomplish this, whether through internal communications, bonus plans, or training and development opportunities. Whatever this looks like, it should make sense within the context of your overall company culture.

5. Compensate ‘experts’ accordingly

Finally, the key to making all of this effort worthwhile is to compensate ‘experts’ in a way that aligns with the value they provide, knowing that the value provided looks different from the value managers provide.

Vales shares the cultural shift Hyland went through to accomplish this. “All employees have had to learn to recognize the new levels and status of technologists; for instance, a ‘Developer 5’ is equivalent in level to a director” both in the value they bring to the company and in how they are compensated.

Too many of us assume management is the natural ‘next step’ in any successful career journey. But what if we flipped that script?

What if, instead of assuming management is what we should strive for, we assumed the opposite? What if we shifted our focus on becoming an ‘expert,’ reserving management positions only for those who wanted the job for a slew of reasons other than compensation?

Would we radically improve the caliber of leadership in our organizations?

I think so. What about you?

Not a member of Medium yet?

Join here to directly support my work and get access to every story on Medium. You can also subscribe to my free newsletter or connect with me on Linkedin.