3 Reasons Individual Contributors Should Become People Leaders

Becoming a people leader may be the best thing you can do for your career.

Individual contributors should consider the benefits that come with being a people leader. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of leading people, focus on the benefits. Being a people leader is the smart choice if you want to maximize your impact.

Once you free yourself from selfishness you will discover that leading people will maximize your impact, skills, and overall contentment with your career.

You can scale your knowledge and skill

There is a cap on the amount of work you can accomplish alone.

When you lead a team, you can spread your knowledge and skills across multiple people. Now there are X number of people that can do the work you used to do by yourself.

You are usually considered for a leadership role because you're good at your job. You probably have a more robust skillset than other people on the team, but that can only take you so far. If there are only 8 hours in the day only so much code can be written, metrics designed, or documents written by one person. When you scale yourself by spreading knowledge to your team, more work gets done with the quality that people usually only expect from you. Not only does the team achieve more but you are viewed as the Linchpin that's making it happen.

Once you build up others on the team something magical happens.

You have more time to work on other important projects.

Scale yourself. Your team will win more rapidly and you will have time to continue leveling them up.

More time to improve processes and procedures

After you detach from daily operations you can drastically improve processes and procedures.

When you're no longer head down on the frontline you can step back and see the bigger picture of how the team operates. You will notice friction, inefficiencies, and opportunities to work better and provide more value.

This is surprisingly rewarding work. Improving processes makes your life easier. You can remove pain points that cause headaches—not just for yourself but for your team, your boss, and your stakeholders. Nobody likes cumbersome processes. So eliminate them. You will be a godsend.

Being in the weeds in your own projects is good for you and the small number of stakeholders involved.

Improving processes across the board is good for everyone.

It's rewarding to help others succeed

There is no better feeling at work than playing part in the success of others.

Of course, you can only realize this feeling when you take a selfless stance. You benefit when you do well and also when others succeed.

There are innumerable benefits to being invested in the success of your team and those around you.

  • Others learn from your mistakes and don't make the same missteps.
  • You learn more about your true strengths and how you can best help people.
  • You shed light on your weaknesses and identify which skills you can focus on.
  • The team improves and provides more value to the organization.

When individual team members win, the team wins, the company wins, and you win.

We need individual contributors but we need leaders more.