Transitioning from an Individual Contributor role into a People Manager can be tough. Up until the point of taking on this new role, an IC only needed to be concerned with how productive they were. Productivity has a specific visual in this individual's head, and it can be hard to see how non-code-writing roles can be measured and productive. What happens more often than not, 82% of the time according to Gallup, is that the person put into the role still views themself as an Individual Contributor. According to Gallup, that's because:

... why [U.S. managers] believed they were hired for their current role, they commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field.

If what got them promoted into this role was their IC work, then it will be a hard transition for this person to see their value in any other light. This can be a huge problem.

Managers who tie their value and success to their previous value and successes will continue to operate as an Individual Contributer, even when they are supposed to lead a team. As put plainly by Mike Maughan for TLNT:

Too often people are promoted because they are good at their current job, not because they have the skill set to do well in a management position. Suddenly tasked with managing people and processes, many managers will default to micromanagement. They know how to do the job they used to have and don’t know how to manage so they default to lording over what they used to do – which means micromanaging.

Micromanaging will make a team nuts, but so will a manager who takes the team's projects for themself. This manager's individual work will take precedence over the team. The manager will prioritize their time over the team's needs. The manager will continue to be a high performer in producing previous value, but they will be a very poor performer in leading a team of ICs. And this will have a heavy cost for the organization. Undoing bad people management can take years and lots of turnover. According to Graziadio Business Review:

A good rule of thumb is that the loss of a talented employee costs the organization one and a half times the employee’s annual salary in replacement costs and lost productivity.

So, for an employee making $120,000, this means $180,000 is lost. And, according to BBC:

[...] stressed employees are more likely to quit – and turnover is expensive. And systematic research demonstrates what ought to be obvious – sick, stressed employees aren’t as proficient or productive in their work as those that are healthier.

So how does a newly promoted Individual Contributer to People Manager avoid this pitfall?

Be selfless when managing

This means putting away their past successes as an IC in favor of future successes as a People Manager. Before accepting this new role as a People Manager, this person should demand to know what success looks like as a People Manager. If their supervisor can't describe it, then they should be very cautious about considering this new role. Hopefully, more often than not, this individual and their manager will work together to define measurable success metrics so that a plan can be constructed around it. And a big portion of this newly established metric for success should have a heavy weight on team member happiness and satisfaction. Oxford published:

An extensive study into happiness and productivity has found that workers are 13% more productive when happy. The research was conducted in the contact centres of British telecoms firm BT over a six month period by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford) George Ward (MIT) and Clement Bellet (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

The best way to achieve success here is by putting those individual needs first over your own. Schedule weekly or bi-weekly one-on-ones with each team member, get to know what provides intrinsic value in their career, get to know where they want to go in their career, and get to know them as a person. This last part might be the most important part. Getting to know the individual is the key to unlocking their future success.

At first, it might be hard to get them to open up about themselves. People in professional settings fear vulnerability. The People Manager has to be vulnerable first. This can be very hard for a newly annointed People Manager to do when they have never experienced it from their own boss.

But get over it.

It's not about you at this point. It's about the team.

Talk to them about your career goals and struggles you've encountered. We all have anxiety at work, so be transparent with it. But don't get too caught up talking about yourself and your career. It's not about you, it's about them.

Take the approach that anything is possible, even though some things are really, really hard to achieve. But this person should know that their People Manager has their back and will help them get there somehow. Be careful with timelines, however. Rarely do things happen "on time." Just let them know that they are supported and help them find a path to those successes. Sometimes that means encouraging them to explore other opportunities, which sounds insane, but it's effective. When a person knows that their manager has their back and is super supportive, they will actually be reluctant to leave the team for an external opportunity. But always be prepared for them to leave, just in case.

Conclusion: Selfless = Success

Putting your team first is a sure-fire way to having a successful and happy team. Putting their needs before your own will ultimately lead to your needs getting filled and huge successes for your career.