When you’re an employee, it feels like your manager’s job is to keep you happy and give you what you want.
When you first get into management, you immediately realize that your job is to serve an entire team in ways that will some times not make individuals happy. You have to focus on doing what’s best for the team, not just giving the loudest team member what they demand.
> Hard disagree. People look for more responsibility / jobs all the time and when they come to you saying they want to stay and this is their condition, you better honor it and not call it "politics".
If the person is deserving of the promotion then withholding it just because is silly. But in the real world that doesn’t really happen. What manager would actively withhold something that would motivate their team? Remember, managers don’t get compensated and promoted for keeping their team members miserable and depriving them of what they want. We get compensated and promoted based on getting the job done.
The problem in these scenarios is that you can’t start trading promotions as leverage. You need to give out promotions as earned according to the criteria spelled out to the team.
If you start giving out promotions to people who seek competing job offers, you’re telling the team that the promotion path is not based on merit or performance, but rather on your ability to hold your manager over a barrel with threats of quitting.
Reward this once and you’ll start seeing much of the team threaten to quit whenever they want something. Motivation will fall as employees realize that their best option to get ahead of their peers is not to work hard, but to threaten to quit. Resentment will grow as team members learn that their peer was promoted for getting competing job offers, not for doing good work. That’s the definition of politics.
Of course, you need to have a valid promotion structure and criteria in place and you need to honor it. But no, you should not get into the habit of giving employees whatever they want in response to threats to leave.
I don't buy the slippery slope argument. It presupposes that everyone has visibility into who is getting job offers, which from my experience, is false. Furthermore, if I went thought the pain of a job hunt, then I'm already dissatisfied, and any counter offer would be pushing on a string. To be attractive, the counter would have to provide genuine change in both role and comp. The dynamic here isn't complicated, it seems transactional.
> When you’re an employee, it feels like your manager’s job is to keep you happy and give you what you want.
Exactly, that's why you go get a competing offer when you do not feel heard from your manager regarding what will make you happy. Especially when you have said career conversations with them and no progress is being made and you're tired of waiting because they are too busy "serving an entire team".
> If the person is deserving of the promotion then withholding it just because is silly. But in the real world that doesn’t really happen.
This happens all the time. People who are more "visible" or "political" can often see promotions before those who may actually deserve them waiting patiently in line. Also fiscal years and promotion cycles are a thing. So it does happen in the real world all the time. Why do you think boomerang employees are a thing?
> If you start giving out promotions to people who seek competing job offers, you’re telling the team that the promotion path is not based on merit or performance, but rather on your ability to hold your manager over a barrel with threats of quitting.
It's really not. If you see it that way, I think you're part of the problem. It's your direct telling you they do not feel heard and this is how they are resorting to being heard. This is usually a last resort for many people. You can "honor" it in many ways. You can decline it because you have no tools to address their concerns, you can accept it because you do have a tool to address their concern, or you can even let them know they are on the path and work with them to make sure they reach that destination. It doesn't even have to be tied to a promotion either, but for many bigger companies that's one of few tools they have to address them. Often they don't play ball and lose the tribal knowledge as well causing even worse issues for the team than just "resentment". Too many great people are lost this way. I'd argue that retaining employees is infinitely better than hiring. Who is going to train the new hires? A manager's first priority is results. Their second priority? Retaining their people.
> When you first get into management, you immediately realize that your job is to serve an entire team in ways that will some times not make individuals happy
When you first get into management, you immediately realize that your job is to serve an entire team in ways that will some times not make individuals happy. You have to focus on doing what’s best for the team, not just giving the loudest team member what they demand.
> Hard disagree. People look for more responsibility / jobs all the time and when they come to you saying they want to stay and this is their condition, you better honor it and not call it "politics".
If the person is deserving of the promotion then withholding it just because is silly. But in the real world that doesn’t really happen. What manager would actively withhold something that would motivate their team? Remember, managers don’t get compensated and promoted for keeping their team members miserable and depriving them of what they want. We get compensated and promoted based on getting the job done.
The problem in these scenarios is that you can’t start trading promotions as leverage. You need to give out promotions as earned according to the criteria spelled out to the team.
If you start giving out promotions to people who seek competing job offers, you’re telling the team that the promotion path is not based on merit or performance, but rather on your ability to hold your manager over a barrel with threats of quitting.
Reward this once and you’ll start seeing much of the team threaten to quit whenever they want something. Motivation will fall as employees realize that their best option to get ahead of their peers is not to work hard, but to threaten to quit. Resentment will grow as team members learn that their peer was promoted for getting competing job offers, not for doing good work. That’s the definition of politics.
Of course, you need to have a valid promotion structure and criteria in place and you need to honor it. But no, you should not get into the habit of giving employees whatever they want in response to threats to leave.