Let’s start with a reality check on being a manager: most of us are accidental managers.
This means that many of us became managers because it was presented to us as the only way to progress and get promoted, so we just kind of said yes to it and suddenly started to manage people.
I’ve spoken to a bunch of people who have enrolled in my new manager academy who have never received any training whatsoever and my course is their first taste of anything structured.
We start to manage people without really knowing what we’re doing and just figure it out as we go along.
I’ve spoken before about the fundamentals of becoming a manager and the first skills that I think a manager needs to learn.
But I’ve not talked as much about how a manager creates value in comparison to an individual contributor. This is a key change to learn because understanding the value that you bring as a manager is crucial in enabling you to focus on the right areas and be effective.
If we stay in the same mindset of an individual contributor, we’ll never unlock our full potential as a manager and it’ll lead to tangible problems such as a lack of delegation or micromanagement.
How to provide value as an individual contributor
Firstly, let’s think about how we provide value in our role as an individual contributor. Whether you are a web designer, a PR consultant or SEO manager, there are a bunch of ways that you’ll provide value to the company that you work for.
Here are a few examples.
Developing skills in your chosen field
You can add value in your role by learning more, whether it’s PPC, SEO, design etc, you can do a better job for your clients or stakeholders by being better at what you do.
Creating tangible deliverables or campaigns
This is the day-to-day work that you deliver that aims to influence whatever metrics or KPIs are important to your company or clients. So it may be launching PR campaigns, creating content or setting up TikTok ads. Whatever it is, you are hands on with work that is very tangible and easy to see the value of – assuming that you do it well!
Taking ownership of day-to-day challenges or problems
As you become more senior as an individual contributor, you’ll also start to add value because you can help solve problems that come up on the projects that you work on. You’ll show that you hack tackled similar issues before and are prepared to own problems as well as solutions.
Now, let’s take a look at how things change in regards to the value that you provide as a manager.
How to provide value as a manager
The first thing to mention is that whilst your value does indeed change when you become a manager, the items above don’t disappear completely, at least not immediately.
This is part of the challenge when you first become a manager: your previous responsibilities don’t suddenly disappear! We basically have to do two jobs, at least for a period of time until we can focus more on being a manager rather than an individual contributor.
For example, we’ll still find ourselves delivering day-to-day work or continuing to learn more skills that relate to our role as an individual contributor.
But over time, we’ll find that we start to focus our time on learning skills that enable us to be a better manager or supporting the day-to-day work of our team.
Let’s look at a few examples of this and how you provide value as a manager
You help others deliver their day-to-day work effectively
Instead of providing value by working on your own clients, projects and deliverables, you’ll be expected to provide value by doing the same for the people who you manage.
This is a key change that you need to make and focus on. It’s a challenge because you may be managing a number of people who will each have a number of projects that they are working on. So you can’t possibly get close to each and every one of them. As a result, you need to spend your time sensibly and empower your team to deliver great work – not do it for them!
You scale your experience across a whole team
An individual contributor will use their experience to overcome challenges on the projects that they work on, especially those that relate to the softer side of delivering work. For example, a client who is concerned about the time that it takes to see results or a stakeholder who needs to see a business case for an investment to be made.
These are less about hard skills and more about knowing how to present a business case, effectively argue a point and negotiate where needed.
As a manager, a huge piece of value that you deliver is helping your whole team with these types of challenges. You’ll be using your experience to work with them on these problems but also teach them how to handle these types of situations themselves in the future.
You help enable a whole team to hit targets and deliver value for their projects
Let’s say that as an individual contributor, you work on five different clients and help those clients hit their targets and business goals.
This has value.
But as a manager, this isn’t where your true value lies.
As a manager, let’s say that you manage five people who each work on five clients each.
Your value is therefore no longer you + five projects.
Your value is now five people + twenty five projects.
Your value is scaled massively and this will be the expectation of you from your own bosses and managers. You’ll no longer be deemed successful in your role because you are able to manage your own projects and deliver work efficiently.
You’ll be deemed successful if your team is able to deliver work on their projects effectively.
What actually changes when you become a manager?
So, let’s summarise by talking about what actually changes when you become a manager.
It’s about scale.
You scale your skills, experience and influence beyond your own work and projects.
As a result, you should be able to generate far more results than you would be capable of on your own.
This is the true mark of a successful manager and the key difference between a manager and an individual contributor.
Moving forward, keep this in mind when you’re deciding how to spend and prioritise your time. Try to resist the temptation to keep doing what made you successful as an individual contributor because what made you successful there, won’t make you successful as a manager.
