Do I have to become a manager?

I can't count the number of times people have come to us because they believe the only way to move up in their organization is to become a manager.

I'll start with a caveat: Some organizations, which are HR or policy dysfunctional, mandate that the promotion path for all positions leads to management. The majority of these 'management' positions manage nothing and no one. They're simply senior-level team members and specialists. The terms manager, leader, and director in those organizations have become meaningless.

So caveats and business-card-inflation aside, when people want to 'move up' or get promoted, at the basic level it's because they want:

• More decision making freedom
• More money
• More power

Assuming you are a team member, as an individual contributor and not a manager, then you have 4 paths you could pursue to get you closer to your 3 "mores" above:

• Become more focused/specialist in what you currently do
• Transition to a management role (includes project management)
• Change to a different individual contributor role (eg. move from Finance to HR)
• Leave your current organization

Which path should you choose?

There are a lot of reasons to choose or not choose any of the above paths. We'll dive into each of them in Part 2.

In the meanwhile, check in to the conversation on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/tech2exceptional and let us know which path you chose or why you haven't chosen yet!