The 95% Rule
As an individual contributor (IC) in Technology, 95% of the reason one is hired is typically for one’s technical skills — the skills listed in the “responsibilities” section of the job posting — whether it’s coding, testing, project management, operations, desktop support, security, or any of the plethora of roles in Technology.
The remaining 5% of the hiring decision is usually based on soft skills — enough to fit with the company culture, to take direction from one’s direct manager, and to generally not piss off one’s co-workers.
The exact split between Technical Skills (TS) and Soft Skills (SS) vary from company to company (so don’t quibble about it being exactly 95% and 5%) but it’s predominantly weighted rather heavily in favor of hard, testable, and verifiable skills.
That’s not a problem. In fact, that makes a great deal of normal, common sense, right?
So why am I writing about this?
When it comes time to promote from within to find or replace a first level manager (aka “people manager”), leadership often looks only as far as the most competent or most senior IC on the team. Therein lies an avoidable pitfall!
The usual expectation for a first level manager is a 50/50 split between Technical Skills and Soft Skills. A direct manager of ICs is more concerned than ever before with goals, performance evaluations, KPIs, OKRs, regular one-to-one meetings with staff, and similar “manager-y” stuff.
Look at it from a math perspective: going from a IC role with 5% Soft Skills expectation to a Manager role with 50% Soft Skills expectation means that one’s reliance on Soft Skills has gone up an order of magnitude!
This is predominantly done with no formal leadership training, mentoring, or other assistance because, face it, leadership training is not particularly well-funded in many companies. This sets up a brand new Manager to experience the slings and arrows of outrageous [mis]fortune — missed expectations, aggravated co-workers, and sets up leadership to potentially regret promoting their former rising star. In the blame game that follows, I’ve heard phrases like “not cut out for management”, “better off in his/her old role”, “struggles with managing their former co-workers”, “demote” or, the worst one, “it’s time to put him/her on a PIP” (a performance improvement plan, usually used as a step in terminating an employee).
It is the JOB of leadership to literally do the math and to prepare a new manager for the significant new requirements of the role. Coach, mentor, and train that rising star to be an exemplary manager. And sending a new manager to a half day course in Colors, DISC, Myers-Briggs, or the current personality assessment fad-of-the-month is simply not enough and does not let you off the hook as a leader. Even if there’s no formal leadership training program in place at your company, the leader who promotes the IC has to take personal responsibility to mentor and coach their employee for the next year at least, to ensure that expectations are well understood, that progress is being made, and that tools and time are available to ensure their success. Remember, their success is your success, too!
If you are that person who is being offered that first management promotion, then please do yourself a huge favor and ask your leader or HR representative what sort of training program you can expect to be enrolled in. If you hear crickets, then be bold and show them this article and talk about basic math.
You’ll be glad you did.
