Expert Answer
Anonymous
I have had several opportunities to coach engineers that were exploring moving from an individual contributor to a team manager role. I use the Goal, Reality, Opportunities and Will (Next Steps) framework (GROW) to coach and measure progress of ICs looking to make this transition. Usually the IC is looking to test the waters and would like to make sure they can come back to being an IC if they can. Lets take one scenario where one of my top IC contributors shared in our 1/1 that she would like to pursue a management role as a goal and wondered if I could help with advise and opportunities.
From a goals perspective, the first step was to get an initial understanding of my employees motives, was this mere curiosity, boredom in current role or a true growth seeking situation. I create a safe space where we level set on her goal to be a manager, I gave insights into the role by sharing a day in the life of a manager, the rewards, opportunities and challenges and then asked questions if this met their expectations of what management was like.
The next step is to look at the realities and opportunities, we identified opportunities on the team where she could lead a few team members acting in the managerial capacity of setting direction, coaching team mates, reporting progress to leadership on deliverables. Luckily we had a group of interns and junior employees and a short term project we could carve out.
The IC took the opportunity led the delivery of the 4 month project acting as the team manager and at the end of the project we gathered feedback from the team she led, we worked together to evaluate her experience, the anonymized feedback and growth areas. She decided at that point that she was not ready to relinquish her technical acumen and would like to stay an IC.
For the record, I have also followed the same approach and have had successful IC to Manager conversions.