Supporting Team Growth
Learn how to tackle questions regarding the growth of team members.
We'll cover the following...
- Have you helped someone in your team grow to the next level in their career?
- Follow-up questions
- Has your report ever asked you for a promotion when they were not ready for one?
- What would you do if a report wants to switch from an IC to a manager role?
- Have you managed someone who was smart, but only did the most minimum work required to meet expectations?
- Have you proactively identified an engineer with good leadership prospects and helped them grow?
Supporting the growth of people within your team is one of the primary jobs of people managers. A people manager invests in helping people grow, learn new skills, acquire new experiences, and progress in their careers. Growing people shouldn’t mean growing your people to the next step on their career ladder. It should be a continuous process where people are always acquiring new skills.
Managers spend a significant amount of time helping their team members grow to the next level in their career ladder. Most companies require people to grow up to a certain level (called the terminal level) within a set time duration. Once an employee reaches the terminal level, they can choose not to grow anymore and keep meeting expectations at their current level. However, good people managers still continue to look for growth opportunities for such team members.
Have you helped someone in your team grow to the next level in their career?
When answering this question, keep the following things in mind.
Promotions are a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator: An individual must consistently perform at the next level for some time before being promoted to the next level. Promoting someone because they seem like they have the potential to perform at the next level may not be good for them and may set them up for failure.
Build a growth plan that covers the gaps for their promotion to the next level: The growth plan should include the gaps and concrete ideas and deliverables to remedy those gaps. It can be very helpful to get your senior engineers, TLs, and team members’ mentors involved in building the growth plan.
Once someone is ready for promotion, you must find promotion sponsors for them: In almost all companies, you’ll need explicit promotion support from the senior people (at the same or above the target level). For promotion to senior levels in particular, you’ll need broad support from some senior ICs and leaders who have worked with the individual. Since you will not be the only one making the decision around promotion, it is essential to have a few promotion sponsors. ...