#Leadership: 3 Reasons Being A Manager Is Overrated…Before you Start Dreaming about Stock Options & your Name on a Door Plaque, Here are a Few Downsides of Being Top Dog

/in /by

Being a Boss Means that you’re Ultimately Accountable for the Output of your Team — for Better or Worse.

A statistic I stumbled across while researching a previous piece has been stuck in my head this week. According to Deloitte’s 2015 Millennial Survey, 53% of Millennials across the globe aspire to be senior leaders (up to and including the CEO) of the organization in which they currently work. Far be it from me to rain on anyone’s parade, but I have to wonder if these (likely) entry-level employees have any idea of what they’re really in for as they climb the ladder to the corner office.

 

Before you start dreaming about stock options and your name on a door plaque, here are a few downsides of being top dog:

The Buck Stops With You

With great power comes great quarterly expectations. Being a boss means that you’re ultimately accountable for the output of your team — for better or worse. While you look like a hero when those under you overdeliver, if your team comes up short, you’re the fall guy. As a manager, you don’t live and die based on your own efforts, but how well you’re able to motivate and manage the efforts of others. Your success is no longer directly within your control, instead it’s based on an aggregation of what those who work for you achieve, which can leave you feeling powerless instead of powerful.

You’ll Be Dealing With Drama

If you’ve never aspired to go into politics or to work in a daycare, perhaps being a manager isn’t for you.  Immersing yourself in uncomfortable interpersonal situations that call for outstanding tact will become a significant portion of your workload. You will have to do performance appraisals of your subordinates and find the most constructive way to provide negative feedback on a subpar work effort. You’ll have to terminate employees and some of them might not go quietly or graciously. You’ll have to mediate petty conflict between team members without seeming to play favorites. You’ll have to switch up your communication style based on which employee you’re talking to and figure out the best way to motivate a group of individuals who may not have the same goals and definitely won’t respond to the same incentives.

 

Like this Article ?…Share It !    You now can easily enjoy/follow/share Today our Award Winning Articles/Blogs with over 120K participates Worldwide in our various Social Media formats below:

FSC LinkedIn Network:   www.linkedin.com/in/frankfsc/en

  • Twitter: Follow us @ firstsunllc

educate/collaborate/network….Look forward to your Participation !

continue of article:

You’re No Longer A Doer

Ironically enough, once you’re a manager, you’ll be doing a lot less of the type of work that got you promoted to that level. You may love being a designer, but once you’re leading a team of designers, your focus shifts from figuring out the best way to create visually appealing and intuitive experiences across various media to how best to manage other people who are doing that and how to effectively allocate your own limited time. If you find fulfillment in getting your hands dirty with the daily intricacies of your work (be that teaching, coding, number crunching, etc.), a managerial role might feel oddly empty — you’ve been rewarded for all your good work by no longer getting to do that work. As Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes notes, most companies don’t have a clear career trajectory in place to advance and reward employees who are specialists in their jobs but not interested in or suited for management roles:

What’s missing, not just in the tech world but across the board, is a dedicated track—complete with titles, incremental pay raises and true upward potential—for exceptional performers who aren’t keen on managing people. These are the experts within an organization who have amassed a unique body of knowledge and who continually push their company to perform better. They may be leaders, but they lead by example, not by mandate. They inspire co-workers around them with their singular contributions rather than through direct instruction.

The Bottom Line?

There’s another statistic within the same Deloitte survey that’s also worth pondering and might shed a little more light on Millennials’ managerial aspirations. According to survey findings, only 28% of Millennials feel that their current job takes full advantage of their skill set. Looked at through this lens, the urge to be the boss may be less about grabbing the brass ring and more about feeling that moving up the corporate ladder is where greater autonomy and freedom lies. That might not be a accurate assumption, but it’s a very understandable one.

Learn more about my work and connect with me on Twitter.

 

Forbes.com | June 11, 2015 | J. Maureen Henderson