The Question That Never Gets Asked

The topic of career advancement finds its way into a large portion of my mentoring conversations. That's not surprising. A significant subset of those conversations have to do with advancement into management [note: I will be using "management" and "leadership" interchangeably for this article understanding that there are differences between those two terms]. The question I invariably get asked in one form or another is "how do I become a manager?".

The problem is that it's not the right question to ask. At least not at first.

The right question to ask, which rarely if ever gets asked, is "Should I become a manager?"

That is, in fact, the more crucial question.

I understand why this question is missing. In most companies the only promotional path past a certain seniority level is up through management. There is no other option so the question doesn't even come up. Unfortunately not everyone is cut out to lead people. That's ok. Not everyone is cut out to be a brain surgeon or a teacher or an engineer or a fireman either. Leading people is its own craft, with its own joys and its own challenges. It is a craft that great leaders never cease trying to improve in themselves.

When I'm being asked by a mentee about how to get into management my first response is a simple question back: "Why do you want to become a manager?"

Here are some of the answers I've received fairly often:

• "To earn more money"
• "To get more visibility with upper management"
• "To get an office"
• "To have an admin/secretary"
• "To choose my own projects"
• "To get a parking spot"
• "To go to conferences"
• "To make people listen to me"

None of these are remotely the right reasons to get into leadership. In a mentee's response to my question I need to hear a good amount of energy and enthusiasm about working with and connecting with people. That's a minimum requirement. Personally speaking, I got into and stayed in a leadership role because I discovered during my career that, while I love working in my industry, the highlights of my day were the one-on-one meetings I conducted with each of my team members. That is in fact a criteria I suggest to mentees seeking to become managers: are one-on-one meetings the highlight of their day?

Right now at companies all around the world individuals are being promoted into management who don't have, and are unlikely to attain, that passion and skill. If you've ever had a bad boss you understand the havoc that person can wreak on a team, on an organization and ultimately to the customer and to the business.

Mentoring is about helping people reach their full potential through self-awareness and self-realization. It's just as important for each of us to know what opportunities to step back from as it is to know which ones to move towards. By asking the right questions and guiding certain people away from becoming managers we, as mentors, are helping more than our mentees - we are helping their current and future teams, companies and customers.