The Unintended Consequence of Expertise

The coffee was cold, forgotten, a dark tide pooling on the desk. Across from me, Sarah, our newest manager, was presenting. Her slides were meticulous, beautiful even, filled with intricate diagrams of code architecture, dependency trees, and deployment pipelines. The silence in the room wasn’t just attentiveness; it was the quiet of a team unsure how to break into a monologue that felt more like a masterclass for new hires than a planning session for their direct reports. She didn’t ask a single question about roadblocks, about bandwidth, about the small, human friction points that inevitably accumulate over 45 working hours. Her brilliance as a coder, the reason she was promoted just 5 weeks ago, had become a barrier, a wall of pure technical competence separating her from the very people she was now supposed to lead.

I’ve seen this play out 25 times over the past 15 years, and honestly, I’ve been part of the problem. There was a time, perhaps 5 years ago, when I pushed for a brilliant graphic designer, someone who could conjure entire brand universes from thin air, to move into a team lead role. Why? Because she was undeniably the best at what she did. It felt like the natural progression, the logical reward. And it was a disaster. Not because she lacked intelligence or dedication, but because the skills that made her an exceptional designer – intense focus, deep immersion in creative work, an almost solitary pursuit of aesthetic perfection – were not the skills of a leader. A manager, as I’ve learned the hard way, needs to be a connector, a translator, a shield, and sometimes, frankly, just a patient listener. It’s a different kind of architecture entirely.

The Spectrum of Expertise

Think about Luna L.M., the elevator inspector I used to bump into in that old, creaky building downtown. Luna was a legend. She could hear a subtle hum that indicated a worn bearing 35 feet away, feel a slight shimmy that no one else noticed, and diagnose a hydraulic issue just by the smell of the oil. Her expertise was profound, specific, almost preternatural. She understood the intricate dance of counterweights, cables, and sensors at a level few others ever would. But promoting Luna to manage a team of inspectors? That would be a different beast entirely. Her value wasn’t in coaching someone else to hear the hum; it was in hearing it herself and knowing exactly what it meant. Her gift was a deep, solitary communion with machines, not a strategic orchestration of human potential.

This isn’t about diminishing the individual contributor. Far from it. It’s about recognizing that we’ve built career paths based on a fundamentally flawed premise: that upward mobility always means moving away from the thing you excel at. We take our most skilled craftspeople, whether they’re software engineers, master roofers, or intricate watchmakers, and we tell them that to truly succeed, they must stop doing the craft and start managing other people doing the craft. It’s like taking the fastest runner and telling them their next promotion is to become a coach, regardless of whether they have any inclination or aptitude for strategy, motivation, or injury management for a team of 15. The underlying assumption is that leadership is inherently superior, a higher calling, when in reality, it’s just *different*.

The Mentor’s Wisdom

I remember reading old texts from a mentor, full of quick, sharp observations, sometimes brutal, sometimes deeply empathetic.

That hit home. It made me reflect on my own eagerness, 15 years ago, to climb that “different mountain.” I thought it was the only way to prove my worth, to earn the respect that came with a title. And I made 5 mistakes in that first year that still make my teeth ache. I micromanaged, believing my way was the only efficient way. I avoided difficult conversations, because confrontation felt unproductive. I hoarded tasks, because it was faster to do it myself than to explain it. Each one of those actions chipped away at my team’s autonomy and trust, eroding their engagement faster than I could build any meaningful progress.

The Threefold Tragedy

The tragedy here is multi-layered.

First, organizations lose their best individual contributors. Sarah, our brilliant coder, will now spend 75% of her time in meetings, performance reviews, and administrative tasks, all while her coding skills, her true passion and strength, atrophy. Second, we create a layer of management that is, through no fault of their own, ill-equipped for the role. This leads to frustrated teams, decreased productivity, and a general air of cynicism that permeates the office like stale air. Third, and perhaps most cruelly, we set up good, talented people for failure, leading to burnout, self-doubt, and a profound sense of disillusionment. They were told this was the reward, only to find it a gilded cage.

The Training Gap

The numbers are stark. A recent study, one of many, indicated that only about 35% of newly promoted managers actually receive substantive training in management skills *before* they take on the role. The rest are thrown into the deep end, expected to swim without ever having learned the strokes. They’re taught to code, to design, to sell, but rarely to coach, to delegate effectively, to navigate conflict, or to foster psychological safety. And then we wonder why teams flounder. We reward brilliance with a new responsibility they’re entirely unequipped for, then blame them when things inevitably go south. It’s a cruel joke, played out countless times.

Underlying Connections

Sometimes I think back to an observation Luna made about the structural integrity of a building.

The same is true for a team. If the managerial connections aren’t sound, if the person at the helm doesn’t truly understand how to support and empower, then all the individual brilliance in the world won’t prevent collapse.

Rethinking Ascent: Parallel Tracks

This paradox isn’t some abstract academic concept; it’s a living, breathing problem in countless workplaces. It’s the reason why the most innovative company sometimes grinds to a halt, why morale plummets after a “successful” promotion cycle. We celebrate the individual achievement of a master craftsman-whether they’re a software architect building complex systems, a graphic designer shaping visual identities, or a skilled roofer ensuring structural integrity for homeowners and businesses like SkyFight Roofing Ltd-and then we tell them, often implicitly, that their true worth is not in the mastery itself, but in leading others to *try* to achieve that mastery. It’s a subtle but insidious devaluation of specialized expertise.

We need to create parallel tracks, where individual contributors can ascend in terms of influence, compensation, and prestige, without ever having to manage a single person. They should be able to become “Distinguished Engineers,” “Principal Designers,” or “Master Roofers” and be recognized as highly valuable, indispensable assets, earning as much or more than their managerial counterparts, simply by being the absolute best at their craft.

Shifting Perspective

We need to shift our thinking by 35 degrees, to reorient our internal compass. The best coders should be coding. The best designers should be designing. The best salespeople should be selling. And yes, the best roofers should be roofing. This isn’t about creating stagnation; it’s about defining mastery as an endpoint, not just a stepping stone. It’s about respecting the deep, focused work that goes into true craftsmanship.

The alternative, the path we’ve been on for too long, is to continue creating cycles of managerial incompetence, diluting our talent pool, and fostering a deep, pervasive sense of quiet despair among those who just want to do great work, unburdened by the responsibilities they never asked for, and were never prepared for.

A Failure of Imagination, A Need for Ladders

The core of it is a failure of imagination on our part. We’ve been trapped by a single, linear definition of “progress.” It’s time to build ladders, not just single-file staircases, where expertise in a domain is seen as an end in itself, a pinnacle to be reached, rather than a temporary stop on the way to a different, often less suitable, destination. It’s about building structures that support people, not just promote them into an inevitable fall from grace.

A lot of what I’m saying might sound like a criticism of those who *do* choose management, but it’s not. It’s a criticism of a system that defaults talented individuals into roles they’re ill-suited for, often against their own inclination. There are incredible managers out there, people who genuinely excel at coaching, inspiring, and removing obstacles for their teams. These are the people who *should* be managers. They possess a distinct skill set, one that is as specialized and valuable as Luna’s ability to diagnose an ailing elevator. They understand that their primary job isn’t to be the best individual contributor on the team, but to enable *each other* to be their best. That’s a subtle but profound difference, one that changes everything by 185 percent.

Promoting with Purpose

The challenge, then, is not to stop promoting, but to start promoting with purpose. To understand that leadership is a distinct skill, a different calling, and not merely the next rung on the ladder for anyone who performs well individually. We need to offer alternative paths for growth, where an individual contributor can achieve the highest levels of recognition and reward without ever having to draft a performance review or mediate a team conflict. It sounds simple, but the cultural shift required is immense, demanding a re-evaluation of what we truly value in our organizations. It’s a recognition that often, the most valuable contribution someone can make is to continue doing exactly what they’re extraordinary at, and not to be forced into a role that diminishes their unique gifts.

So, what if the true measure of a company’s success wasn’t just how many promotions it handed out, but how many people it allowed to stay brilliant at their chosen craft, rewarding them commensurate with their expertise, not just their rank?