Why Career Growth Requires More Than Technical Excellence

Research & Sources / Corporate Professional Growth

On almost every sports team, the best player and the captain are different people. The best player scores the goals. The captain reads the game, calms the team, talks to the referee and lifts everyone when things go wrong. Both matter. But the skills are different. Careers work the same way.

Technical excellence opens the door

Early in a career, being excellent at your craft is what gets you noticed: the best analyst, the sharpest engineer, the most reliable consultant. That is fair and important. Without real competence, nothing else holds.

But many professionals are surprised when, after years of excellent work, the next step does not come, or when it comes and feels much harder than expected.

What research shows

When Google studied what makes its best managers effective, technical expertise did appear on the list, but it was only one behaviour among many. Coaching, empowering the team, communicating well, supporting career development and having a clear vision mattered at least as much.¹

Alan Benson, Danielle Li and Kelly Shue found that companies often promote their best individual performers to manager roles, and that these new managers’ teams then tended to perform worse.² The skills that made someone the best player did not automatically make them a good captain.

The skills that grow in importance

• Communication: explaining complex things simply, listening well.
• Influence: getting support from people who don’t report to you.
• Judgement: deciding well with incomplete information.
• Developing others: making the people around you better.
• Self-awareness: understanding how you come across. Allan Church found that high-performing managers saw themselves more accurately than average performers.³

Don’t abandon your craft

This is not a call to stop being excellent. Technical credibility remains valuable, especially in expert fields. The point is to add new skills on top, not to replace the old ones.

How to start

Ask for feedback on how you work with people, not only on what you deliver.

Take on a role that stretches your people skills: leading a project, mentoring someone, presenting to senior leaders.

Find a mentor who has made this transition. Research links mentoring with greater career satisfaction and commitment.⁴

What this means for you this week

• Rate yourself on the five skills above, 1 to 5.
• Ask someone you trust to rate you too.
• Pick the biggest gap and one way to practise it this month.
• Volunteer for one task that builds that skill.

Keep scoring goals. And start learning to read the game.

Sources

1. Google re:Work. Following the data: The research behind great managers (Project Oxygen). rework.withgoogle.comBehaviours of Google’s most effective managers: coaching, empowering, communicating, a clear vision; technical skill is only one of them.
2. Benson, A., Li, D. & Shue, K. (2019). Promotions and the Peter Principle. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 2085-2134. doi.orgTop salespeople were more likely to be promoted to manager, and their teams then performed worse: being good at the job is not the same as being good at leading it.
3. Church, A. H. (1997). Managerial self-awareness in high-performing individuals in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(2), 281-292. doi.orgHigh-performing managers were more self-aware: their self-ratings matched others’ ratings more closely.
4. Allen, T. D., Eby, L. T., Poteet, M. L., Lentz, E. & Lima, L. (2004). Career benefits associated with mentoring for protégés: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(1), 127-136. doi.orgMentored people report more career satisfaction and commitment; effects on pay and promotion are positive but small.