Developing Your Team IS Developing Your Career
A manager’s job is to facilitate their team’s success. This is a critical point to internalize - as a manager, you are measured on the performance of your team, not your direct individual contributions. This can be tough to accept for people who advanced to management roles by virtue of their performance as individual contributors. Remember, it only benefits you to develop your team members to their full potential.
To succeed at talent development, you must genuinely want to help people improve, and engender an environment of trust. Only then will people be receptive to your advice because they’ll believe that you have their best interests in mind (because you really do). The fact is, without this sincere foundational mindset, no advice will make someone a successful manager. You can’t fake it; don’t bother trying - people will see through the facade. If you are going in to an interaction expecting some sort of favor in return for your help, or holding back because you’re afraid your employee might develop into a rival then you’re done before you’ve even started. Your team members are not your rivals; developing them to handle some of the things you do means you won’t have to do those things anymore – it frees you up to get involved in bigger, better, exciting, new things.
Years ago, I began formally mentoring a colleague shortly after he was promoted to his first formal team management role. We hit it off, and for more than a decade I served as his advisor, sounding board, and confidante. He rapidly rose through the ranks (constantly developing and strengthening team members and colleagues along the way) and today is in a top executive role. While I’d like to take all the credit, the fact is he’s a very talented and driven person. Importantly he absolutely exudes sincerity. People trust his advice because they can tell that he doesn’t have a hidden agenda.
Strengthening your team by strengthening the players will ultimately result in more opportunities for everyone (including you). There is no point in pettiness or holding back your best guidance. It’s not a zero-sum game; there’ll be enough success to go around. Throughout my own career I’ve worked to help others succeed without expectation of any form of compensation from them, and I’ve had absolutely no fear that they might turn into rivals adversely affecting my own career aspirations. Both of these attitudes came across when working with direct reports and colleagues. They could sense that I was a true ally, genuinely acting in their best interest (and were therefore receptive to my advice). Knowing that making the team stronger created maximum value, I had confidence that there would be plenty of opportunities for me, and it proved true, there were.
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