November 4, 2016
Interview with Erika Andersen, author of the book Leading So People Will Follow
Mike Carruthers:
If you’re really good at your job the normal career path is to get promoted into management and that’s where so many people fail.
Erika Andersen:
I can’t tell you how many good people who were good at their jobs I’ve seen yet blown out of organizations when they’re thrown into management leadership roles and don’t do well.
Erika Andersen, author of the book Leading So People Will Follow, says often for example a top salesperson will become the sales manager.
And some people they should be fabulous sales people until the day they retire because that’s what they’re really great at – and they’ll be mediocre leaders at best. Same with teachers, teachers who get promoted into administration jobs and they adored showing up in their classrooms every day and they hate leading a school.
There is this assumption that we ought to want to and it’s expected that we move up the ladder.
I mean if I’m a really wonderful engineer or salesperson or scientist or librarian – party on, do that, do the thing that you love and that you’re great at.
Before people move up into management positions they need to know if they “A” they really want to and “B” have the skills to do it.
There’s a direct correlation to productivity, to employee engagement, to customer satisfaction if you have better managers and leaders in your organization your organization’s going to do better. There’s- all the data shows that and then we still keep doing this. Just keep throwing people into the deep end of the pool and hoping they don’t die.