Should I move into management or stay as an ic, and how do I handle leadership?

[Ryan.L]

I’ve been offered a promotion to a management role, but I’m hesitant because I’ve always been an individual contributor. How do you know if you’re ready for that kind of shift in responsibilities, especially the people leadership part? I worry my technical skills won’t translate and I’ll struggle with performance management.

[IsabellaJG]

First, I tried to test the waters with people work on a small project. I chaired a kickoff, ran weekly one on ones with two teammates, and tracked blockers and delivery. The clue wasn’t a magical switch in my brain, but that I cared about helping others unblock their work more than I enjoyed solving code on my own.

[Jack88]

Yes and then I hit a wall. The first real performance conversation I had felt strained and personal even though it should have been just feedback. I kept rereading a couple of management notes and wished I had a mentor to observe; do you have a mentor you can shadow in a current manager role?

[Victoria97]

To me the puzzle looked like whether the bottleneck was me or the system. I spent a few weeks mapping who owned what decisions, what I delegated, and what I still did myself. The analysis didn’t give me a magic signal, but it did reveal a missing rhythm: regular performance updates, clear success criteria, and a dependable channel for feedback.

[Jack_B]

One concrete action I took after a rough start was to propose a 60 day trial period with a fixed one on one cadence and a shared team goal. I measured morale with a quick pulse poll after the first month and looked at how fast blockers got resolved. It helped me decide if I wanted to keep leaning in or pull back.