Lindsay Holmwood wrote a lovely piece about the common misconception of management being a promotion rather than a career change:

It’s not a promotion – It’s a career change

Lindsay covers two contributing factors for first time managers being woefully unprepared to their roles and managers:

• Systemic undervaluation of non-technical skills , which is probably most pervasive in Engineering, but almost just as common in other disciplines.
• The Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias (90% of people think they are “better than average” drivers”)

Which unfortunately tends to have a multiplied impact given the role of a manager.

He also suggests focusing on three key levers for improving your skill as a manager: professional training, mentors and self-education.

A highly recommended read, especially for aspiring managers and managers who often times get frustrated about not being able to do “real work”.

I know this all sounds rather trivial, but in places where management is not proactively positioned as a career change, and a an “individual contributor” promotion path is not well defined, management easily gets perceived as the “only way up”. Which is, as Rand Fishkin suggests, not a good situation to be in:

If Management is the only way up, we’re all F’d