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Career Management

For years I've enjoyed listening to Manager Tools (and Career Tools, but particularly MT). I'm not sure why. Maybe it helps me understand the good, mediocre, and bad ways I've been managed. Maybe I just like organizational behavior.

I'm brainstorming careers that are not people management but would be a good fit for someone fascinated by MT. So far, I have one: 

  • researcher in management and leadership -- either academic faculty or in some sort of think tank, research org., etc.

Other ideas?

PhilipR's picture
Submitted by PhilipR on Thursday April 4th, 2024 2:13 pm

FWIW -- tangential to my question -- part of me aspires to actual people management and part of me fears it would be a disaster. Either way, I'm late enough in my career and have faced enough road blocks that I'm pretty philosophical about the amount of time it would take to get there from here. Maybe I'll be surprised. It's OK if not.

And anyway, it's possible I wouldn't be any good at it. The "working with individuals to help them maximize their performance in pursuit of team goals" part is really exciting. Same with relationship-building, delegation, coaching, career planning, encouraging.  The "doing lots of paperwork, following up on tasks and relationships, sitting in maybe the useless 3/4 of meetings just because that's what's expected in most orgs" isn't stuff I'm naturally good at. I am extremely confident in my potential to become good at the former things, recognizing the lack of wisdom that comes with inexperience. I would find the supports I need to get better at the latter things if they were part of my job. 

FWIW I sort of embarked on an academic career but didn't pursue it. So even though I have the PhD (a time-consuming part!) I can't imagine ending up in a faculty job now. However there may be other business-research employers, not sure.