Am I Ready to Be a Manager? The Four-Question Willingness Audit

The question today is: am I ready to be a manager? My name is Ramona Shaw, and I’m the host of The Manager Track podcast. The people who ask whether they’re ready to be a manager are usually more ready than the people who never ask this question. Asking it on a loop is also the most common way that I’ve watched someone stall out, sometimes for years, never really capturing that opportunity or telling others that they want to move into a leadership role.

So it’s this ongoing question. Should I? Do I want to? Will I be good at this? And so they don’t mention it. They don’t communicate it. They don’t develop the skills in order to get there. And that would ultimately lead to a slowdown of progression.

Now, another problem with this question, am I ready to be a manager, is that it has no evidence standard and no end date to it. It’s like an open question that’s so vague. There’s no score you hit that will give you the answer, no moment where the feeling sort of arrives and you just know, now I’m ready.

That’s not how it works. So with that and because of it, you can basically ask this question forever if you wanted to. And it’s sometimes a safety mechanism and delay tactic to confront the uncomfortable, and it can actually feel like you’re preparing and deciding, or in the process of deciding. But if this resonates with you, then be mindful. This question, am I ready to be a manager, is one that we personally often misuse, and it’s really hard to answer.

For the sake of this short episode on this particular question, because it’s something that I hear often when I speak to high-performing ICs, most advice that they get from their mentors or their managers is basically a trait list. Yes, you need to be a good communicator. You need to put the team first. You need to think about the company more. You need to be a strong listener. You need to be great at time management. Those are things that may come up, and those are certainly all real qualities, and they’re also a description of people who have already been doing the job for a year or a few years.

With that, it’s not actually an entry requirement. So in our conversation, you and me, we’re gonna throw out the checklist. What replaces it is a willingness audit. I’m gonna call out four things you either will or won’t do, and all of them are testable this week. None of them require anyone’s permission to answer.

And then I’m gonna share two more things: what the research says about why waiting to feel capable is a loop without any exit, and the part almost nobody says out loud, which is that for some of you, the honest answer here is no, and there’s a clean way to say it and to get to that conclusion.

So start with what the question actually is underneath. Am I ready is a permission question. You’re not assessing a decision, like am I making the right decision? You are waiting for a verdict, and a verdict made by someone else. Often that is our direct manager. And that is also why it carries so much weight and produces so little movement on our own part, because we’re waiting for that verdict to be communicated. At that point, it’s a slippery slope to turning your next career move into a ruling by someone else on your readiness.

Let me give you an example. I worked with a senior engineer who had been told two review cycles in a row that she wasn’t quite there yet, and both times she accepted it. She went back to her desk, basically, and responded by doing more excellent individual work: closing tickets faster, writing cleaner code, writing more code, being part of more projects.

And that work was the exact evidence keeping her where she was. She kept proving she was valuable in the seat she already occupied. But no one was questioning that. No one was questioning whether she was already good enough in the seat. So she just thought, "I’m gonna double down in order to prove that I’m ready for the manager position." But that’s not the evidence she then produced. And I wanna say here, most people, most of us, will do that. We will double down on just doing more of what we’re already doing. It’s kind of natural, especially with vague feedback of "not quite ready yet," right?

So the move here is to make the criteria say something really specific. For example, if my client said to their manager, "I’ve heard that I’m not quite there yet twice in a row. I’m not asking you to change the answer today. I am asking what specifically would change it and roughly when we would look at that again."

That does two things, right? It doesn’t fight the verdict in itself. We’re not defending it. We’re not acting defensive. But it puts a date on the table. Because vague feedback can only stand in a room if there’s no clear fact assigned to it, like the date and the specific behavior.

And on that latter part, the behavior, there too, when someone says, "Well, you need to demonstrate more confidence and executive presence. You need to have more influence." That’s not an answer. That’s not useful. So you have to double down and get the facts. "Thank you for the direction. It would be very useful for me if you help me figure this out a bit more. When you picture someone who has that already, what are they doing, let’s say in a meeting or in a project, that I am not?"

And that specific question will give you the facts on the behavior. So with that, you really wanna get to the gap so that you’re not walking away from such a conversation thinking you need to double down and just do more of what you already are doing. Because let me underline this one more time: doing excellent individual or IC work is evidence for the IC role you are already in, not for that manager position.

So let’s get to the four questions I mentioned earlier. Answer them honestly, and you’ll know more in 10 minutes than you have in two years of wondering or possibly stalling.

First one: are you willing to have your results measured through other people? The day that you take the job, the manager position, your output stops being yours. You get basically graded on work you didn’t do, some of which will be worse than what you would have produced. And sometimes your results are determined by what someone else did. And that is, for many people, a tough one to swallow and a tough one to deal with.

So you can test this this week. Hand off something that you’re genuinely good at, right? Something that you know how to do, and you know you would do it well, and let someone else handle it, and then let them come back to you, likely with about 80% of your standard, so to speak. Then don’t fix it, but sit with this situation where you’re getting 80% of meeting the standards. You can now go back and tell them, not specifically "you gotta fix XYZ," but "give it another run," "think about it more this way," "give this a bit more air time," or "go a little bit deeper here."

But don’t actually do it. So give high-level direction to how it could be leveled up, but that’s it. And then take that back and pass it on to whoever this deliverable was meant for. And if you can’t leave it alone, and you have to go in and edit it before you’re passing it on, then that’s good information. But again, this is a skill you can specifically train to be more ready for when that manager position comes your way. ’Cause that is something you’re gonna have to deal with and navigate from day one.

Number two: are you willing to be disliked on purpose? Not you being indifferent to being liked. It’s not the same, ’cause almost nobody is. And the ones who have a hard time being disliked tend to make less effective managers. Now, we’re social creatures. We all wanna be liked. So it’s not like I don’t have a preference for it, but can I choose to be disliked to do what’s right for the team, the business, the client? That includes giving the kind, direct, but also tough feedback at times.

There’s a version of this job, the manager job, that is very pleasant. People love you. You might be removing barriers. You are promoting the team. You make great decisions on how to move forward or what to do. That’s all great. But then you’re gonna have to make unpopular decisions. You have to give the tough feedback. You might even have to let someone go, right? So those are all things where you’re gonna say the words, and someone’s not gonna like you, and you know you’re doing this almost deliberately because you know it’s actually for the better, even if it makes someone dislike you in the moment.

You can test this by saying something unpopular in a meeting, a contradicting opinion. Obviously, don’t make this up. It needs to be genuine. But something where it takes a lot of courage, and you know someone might not like this, but it’s your truth. And see how you navigate this. See if you can handle it or how hard that is for you. That’s another data point for you to consider.

Okay, question number three: are you willing to decide without enough information? Ambiguous moments, right? You get paid for judgment under ambiguity, not for being right. Half your calls will basically be made on partial data, if not all of them, because there’s something fictional about always having 100% of all information or data, and you will only find out later which ones were right and which ones were wrong.

Making decisions with this ambiguity in place is a really important leadership skill. You can practice this before you’re in a manager role. So make a decision this week without the extra input you would normally wait for, because you realize, no, time matters more here than trying to gather as much information as possible. Now, be risk-aware, be risk-conscious. Don’t do this with something that would completely backfire, but a low-stakes decision where a timely decision will be beneficial to you, and gathering a lot more information to complete that picture would slow you down and make you less effective. If you can make that trade-off, good for you. That’s what we’re looking for.

Okay, number four: are you willing to do the work that nobody sees? Documenting things, doing follow-ups, having yet another hard conversation because the first conversation you had didn’t really land and nothing changed. Helping someone with a project that your name is not gonna be on, coaching someone through a difficult situation or client interaction. Again, they’re then the ones who have the phone call, take the meeting, write the email. Their name is on the report. No one actually sees the work that you’ve done in the backend. All other leaders, especially senior leaders, know exactly what goes into leading from behind the scenes. But as an IC, most people are not used to that.

So it’s something to learn and learn to tolerate. And you can test this too. Help someone on the team in a way that you know no one’s gonna give you credit for and no one will know, including your manager. So doing things that not even your manager will know you did, but that were to help someone else.

Now, one more thing before we move on. Sometimes the "you are not ready" is a stalling tactic rather than real feedback from a manager. And there are a few signs that will help with this. If the criteria that your manager shares with you move every time that you meet, like the horizon moves as you move, that’s a problem. If there’s no date attached, that is a problem. And if the feedback stays in adjectives, better, more, and so forth, instead of real behaviors, that is another problem. So when you see these things, or all three of them together, stop asking for guidance and ask for specifics, and ask for them in writing. "Hey, could you put the two or three things in an email so I can track against them and have them as a reference point?" That is an absolutely reasonable request to make, and it’s very hard for a manager to say no to that.

Now, quick pause here. If what we’re covering today is resonating, and you’re someone who wants to take this all the way and have a successful leadership career, I wanna tell you about the Leadership Accelerator. This is our 12-week program that we run specifically for new and early-stage managers, people who are great at their jobs and now need to become great at leading. We go deep on exactly this kind of thing: making decisions with incomplete information, delegating without quietly redoing people’s work, giving feedback and having the tough conversations, and the list goes on.

This is a cohort-based program, so you don’t go through this alone, where you have to watch videos on your own, or it’s just a cookie-cutter approach. This is highly personalized. We have small group coaching and one-on-one support so that what you learn actually sticks and actually works for the situation you personally are in. So if you’re in the first couple years as a first-time manager or about to be promoted, then check the link in the show notes to learn more about the Leadership Accelerator.

Okay, now back to the episode. I mentioned earlier that I’m gonna share two findings worth knowing here. Bandura’s work on self-efficacy is the foundational one. Belief in your own capability is built primarily through mastery experience, which basically means having actually done the thing. Sure, encouragement helps a little as well, and people believing in you is helpful. And watching someone else do it helps a little. But doing it yourself does most of the work, which basically means that waiting until you feel capable before you take on the thing that produces the feeling is a never-ending loop. Sometimes we have to do the thing and actually experience it for us to feel that sense of competence and believe in ourselves.

Now, the second one comes out of leadership development research. The Center for Creative Leadership, alongside Linda Hill’s research on new managers, states two things that really stand out here. Most leadership capability develops through challenging assignments rather than through instruction. And new managers who start in that position usually arrive holding a consistent set of wrong assumptions, the largest there being that authority comes with the title. And they quickly learn on the job, by being in it, that those assumptions are wrong.

This, by the way, is also why in our Leadership Accelerator we don’t just teach frameworks, but we actually apply them, and we talk through what the experience is doing to them on the job, learning through the actual actions that we’re taking each and every single week over the course of three months.

Being not ready often describes an assignment that you have not been given, an experience you haven’t had, rather than a capability that you do not have yet. And with that, here’s what often goes unsaid. Waiting until you’re certain can feel like you’re just being cautious, but it also means that you never really have to be accountable for the choice, ’cause you’ve never decided, so you can never be wrong, right? "I’m thinking about it." It’s literally delaying the decision, but with that, you’re not taking action, and therefore you could also not be rejected, not be wrong, and not fail.

And the cost of that is not just abstract. The roles that are opportunities for you to step into then get filled by someone else, and often someone with less capability but just more courage or more decisiveness and less self-reflection. Those people often don’t ask themselves the question of whether they’re ready yet. They will just take the opportunity and step into it and then learn as they go.

Now, of course, with asking this question, am I ready yet, should I become a manager, for some people the answer is going to be no. So if you answered no to several of the four questions that I asked earlier, then you might know, okay, either I haven’t had the chance to do that yet, so then find opportunities to demonstrate it and see how you’re doing. Or you might say, "Hey, if I’m actually in a leadership position, I am confident that I can learn that on the job." Okay. But if you think, "Oh my gosh, no, that sounds awful, and I don’t think I wanna learn that," or, "I don’t think I wanna do work that I don’t get credit for," then the answer might really be no, you’re not ready to be a manager, and maybe you wouldn’t even be fulfilled being a manager. You might do better doing IC work, find yourself thriving more there, and hence be more successful on that track.

Declining a management track is a totally legitimate professional decision. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. Plenty of exceptional careers get built on that expert track, not the people track. What does cause actual damage in someone’s career is taking the job while privately being unwilling to do it and then letting a team absorb the cost of that for years. If you take the manager position but you actually continue to wanna operate as an IC, that is going to be the problem.

So if you notice, yeah, no, it’s just really not me, then own it. "Hey, I’ve thought about this seriously, and I’m not willing to do the parts of the job that matter most. I’d rather tell you now than take on the job because I feel flattered that you thought of me, or because I don’t want to disappoint you, and then eight months in, this isn’t going well." That kind of self-knowledge is actually gonna garner a lot of respect from other people, because people do appreciate this sense of ownership, and people do respect others who know their strengths and know what they want and what they don’t want, or what their weaknesses are.

So as we’re wrapping this up, there are a couple of questions you can ask yourself. Which of the four questions that we asked earlier are you actually unwilling to do? Second, what have you been calling preparation that is really just a delay, if any? And if the role opened next Monday, if there was a manager position available, what would you say and what would you do?

And with that, we’re gonna wrap up this episode of The Manager Track podcast. If this was useful, please like and subscribe and share it with someone else who might be exactly in that situation, figuring out whether they wanna step into a leadership role or not. Thanks so much, and bye for now.

If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out at archova.org/masterclass. The second resource is my bestselling book, The Confident and Competent New Manager: How to Quickly Rise to Success in Your First Leadership Role. Check it out at archova.org/books, or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there.