Falling into a management role that’s not well-suited to the individual happens in sales perhaps more than any other area of a company.
Sales leaders who consistently exceed expectations are asked to manage the team. The company envisions the rainmaker coaching middle performers up, while the high performer embraces the promotion as a natural next step in their career and a chance to share their skills with others.
What could possibly go wrong? Statistics indicate quite a lot.
Over the decades, companies have learned the hard way that the skill set that makes a great salesperson is not the same skill set needed to be an effective sales manager.
There are numerous reasons for this, including companies failing to provide proper training for new sales managers.
Frank Cespedes, a senior lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School, said sales leaders who are promoted to manage a team must shed their former identity and recognize their role has changed. A new manager can’t micromanage other reps, nor should they aim to turn team members into mini mes.
Cespedes said they must learn how to hire and nurture talent, understand key performance metrics and commit to administrative tasks.
An accidental sales manager can disrupt a strong sales team and cause irreparable damage. Other reps may quit and the misfitted manager may resign or be fired. Such a situation can be avoided if everyone involved recognizes that management isn’t a good fit for an individual ahead of their promotion.
A report from Gartner states that one in five managers would prefer not to manage others if they had a choice. James Chitwood, author of “Leadership Is Not Enough,” argues that companies are not being creative enough with their compensation structure and organizational charts to allow high performers to carve out career advancement within an organization while not taking on oversight of others.
“Can one remain an individual contributor and still have an ascending career path? I think so,” he states.
Many tech companies, Chitwood said, have adopted a player coach model, where leaders continue to contribute individually while overseeing others in a less formal manner.
Former Wall Street Journal columnist Rachel Feintzeig, who wrote the paper’s “Work & Life” column for over a decade, profiled several workers in a column last year who requested to move out of management roles after discovering it was not a good fit — a process dubbed “unbossing yourself.”
In a LinkedIn post from 2023, Hera McLeod, a former Microsoft executive who now works as a principal technical program manager for Amazon, emphasized that it’s not necessary to manage people to be a leader. In fact, McLeod advises colleagues who seek her counsel on how to make it into management to first become a leader. She offers these ways to lead without managing others:
- Champion, endorse and advocate. “When opportunities for impactful projects come up, a great leader will ensure that everyone on the team has access to projects that allow them to stretch to the next level and get the necessary visibility.”
- Encourage risk taking and celebrate mistakes. “As a leader without direct reports, being able to teach someone else and stepping back far enough to let them try it allows you to scale your talents across the team for larger overall impact.”
- Embrace friction. “Leaders understand how to bravely and respectfully disagree – challenge ideas – and push others to think outside the box. They’re also people who create space for others who aren’t as comfortable speaking up to share their perspective.”
- Be vulnerable and authentic: “A blind spot that I’ve seen many people in leadership suffer from is the belief that vulnerability equates to weakness. It’s this belief that often has managers placing up walls when they should be bringing them down.
- Be self-aware. Know your strengths and be open to others giving you honest feedback. Actively listen and follow up with additional questions on how to improve. To grow as a leader, you must start with self-awareness.
The best leaders begin practicing leadership long before they are promoted, Matt Mayberry, a corporate trainer and speaker on the subject, states in an article published by HBR. “In its purest form, leadership at work is the ability and desire to accept responsibility for your career. It involves having a vision that benefits not just yourself, but your organization and colleagues. Leaders are skillful at influencing others to believe in that vision and gaining followers that will help them make an impact.”
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