Earlier this week a former career coach (Tara Nesser, LevelUp) posted about the lack of training companies provide to employees who are moving into people manager roles. As one becomes less responsible for their own individual work, and more responsible for other's results and execution, it can be hard to divorce from the sense of purpose and pride that individual ownership provides. I certainly experienced that as I moved from analyst to engagement manager in the consulting world. It's hard to step back from being hands on.
This need to delegate, or rather, pass on ownership to others has come up for me recently at the startup where I work. Though now almost six years old, we have grown the team size at a modest and concerted pace, giving (or requiring) individuals the opportunity to wear multiple hats, and extend their responsibility and impact beyond their stated job title. For many, this was exciting and they grew to expect the heavy plate of duties. Not that it was always welcome, and not that it always made sense - as VP of Operations I have done everything from lead VC pitches to write social media copy and recreate our Sales collateral. But by being involved in multiple streams of work, there is a sense of feeling needed by many, and that can feel good.
Now we are ramping up for ambitious goals and future fundraising, and starting to hire both more people and more specialists. Over the last few months I have been leading efforts to stand up net-new teams as well as roles that were largely filling gaps in Product, People, and Marketing. As we've started onboarding these new hires, an underlying tension has started to peak through the cracks. Company veterans (which I define as tenures of over a year) have been told to either transition work or are not included in future efforts for projects they had helped get off the ground. This is done with the best of intentions, but I've now also seen that it can feel like a slight (we don't need you for this anymore), or it takes a team member away from the stretch work they may have found more interesting than their 'real' role.
We have an opportunity to ease this transition. As a company grows, it should hire people for specific roles and move away from having a team full of generalists playing multiple roles. So we need to perhaps be more ceremonious in the shift - recognize and name the efforts of coworkers who have been carrying the heavy load, acknowledge how far they brought something along while operating outside of their domain. And then make sure the work they are turning back to is just as fulfilling, that there is a different sense of feeling needed by others. Being constantly busy and pulled in a million directions may create a sense of importance or being needed, but we all know enough by now that this isn't healthy or productive in the long run…a topic for another post.