Managing others is very different to managing self, and carries some quite different values. When one's role changes from being a team member to being a team leader, inevitably growth will follow. This article from the Avocado Vision archives looks at one such example.

Mark Grace is a school teacher at Jeppe High School for Boys. And he’s not just an ordinary school teacher. He’s actually an exceptional school teacher. He has an incredible passion for the work he does (after more than 20 years of doing it). He has mastered the art of helping his students find the genius inside themselves. He has challenged himself philosophically to engage with teenage boys by teaching them to meditate at the beginning of every lesson. This should get their brainwaves and bodies aligned to optimal learning conditions to help them derive the best learning they can out of every conversation he has with them.

He’s a quirky fellow. You kind of love him or hate him, and his approach isn’t for everyone. And I have been the happy mother of a very inspired teenage boy who thrives under Mark’s tutelage. But I’m sad now, because Mark is moving on to be a headmaster at another school, and it feels like the end of an era. The master technician is putting down his chalk and taking up that challenge of managing a school – the violinist becomes the conductor.

And therein lies the challenge: all of us who have laid down the tools of our trade to walk into the role of management know what lies ahead for our friend Mark Grace. We all know that the skills he learned to achieve mastery in the classroom are not going to be what he’ll need to know when he heads up the school. So much of his life is about to change, and if he’s anything like the rest of us, he has no idea what’s coming!

If Drotter et al are to be believed (The Leadership Pipeline), the biggest change Mark is going to face is a change in values. Which sounds weird, of course. Because surely one develops one set of values that one subscribes to over one lifetime? But no – the theorists tell us that, as we progress along the leadership pipeline, we have to change the type of work we value.

The teacher, violinist, sales person, trainer, customer service consultant, are all on the ‘Individual contributor’ or ‘Manager of Self’ path of the Leadership Pipeline. Each individual at the top of their game on this path really values the delivery of work. They thrive on seeing the transformation of a struggling pupil, the satisfaction of a delighted customer, the deal landed perfectly, a violin solo executed with pathos and perfection. The skills needed to produce brilliant work like this are the skills of the technician: mastery depends on really valuing the flawless execution of the work.

I have been watching our own Avo managers managing the transition from being an individual contributor to managing others. Most of them come from the world of specialists and keep finding themselves getting involved in doing the work. Deadlines are hectic, targets challenging, and the words that most come out of their mouths is “I haven’t got time to teach someone how to do this! I’ll get it done faster if I do it myself!”

Of course, the tough thing about that is that every time they haven’t got time to enable other people, a manager makes two self-sabotaging decisions: firstly, the time pressure will be a recurring problem, because the manager will spend too much time ‘doing’ rather than ‘enabling’, and so will never have enough time to do her job properly. Secondly, not enabling their people means they will never feel safe with delegating, and so will maintain a mediocre team reporting to them with substandard outputs. The stress and pressure that creates is just not worth it.

A manager has to know that their job is no longer about doing stuff, but rather working the people. Every person in their team has to have attention and focus so they can each deliver brilliant work. Jack Welch said it brilliantly: “It’s a job that’s about 75% about people, and 25% about other stuff”

So to Mark Grace: as you take up your new and exciting role, remember that being brilliant in the classroom no longer counts. You will be figuring out how to build your school teaching team’s capability to be brilliant in the classroom, and all the support that goes with that. Happy conducting!

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