Welcome to the first in our new monthly guest series on Wise Talk — spotlighting fresh, bold perspectives from people shaping the future of work. This month, we’re kicking things off with Tetiana Mykhailiuk, SVP of People & Culture at Bayzat, as she challenges one of the most persistent myths in career development.
When I got the opportunity to contribute to WiseTalk, I started listing out ideas, topics I’ve worked on, things I care about, and lessons worth sharing. But as I was putting my thoughts together, a conversation over dinner completely reshaped what I wanted to write.
I met up with one of our former managers, someone we had promoted during a time of fast growth. They were great at their job, highly respected, and someone we didn’t want to lose, so we moved them into a leadership role. Needless to say, they left nonetheless.
Over dinner, they reflected on that chapter:
“At the time, I said yes because I thought that was the only way to grow. But truthfully? I didn’t want to manage a team. I wanted to have more influence, earn more, and be part of the big conversations. That’s what I was chasing.”
They went on to say how stepping away from people management and into a director-level role focused on strategy and cross-functional work finally gave them the fulfillment they’d been missing. That conversation stuck with me because this was one of the biggest learnings we, as the People & Culture team had from the time of hyper-growth.
Here is how it went.
A few years back, we were scaling fast, especially in our sales teams. To retain high performers, we did what many companies do: we promoted them into manager roles. Growth meant leadership, right? Except, it didn’t always work. When we later had to restructure, we saw what we had overlooked. Some of those leaders were struggling – not because they weren’t capable, but because they never really wanted to manage in the first place. What they did want was more decision-making power. More visibility. More money. More impact. They wanted to collaborate across teams, influence direction, and be in the room, but not necessarily manage people, hire, fire, or handle performance reviews.
We had equated growth with managing others, and in doing so, we missed out.
We soon realized we weren’t the only ones making this mistake. Gallup’s landmark study, The State of the American Manager, looked at data from 2.5 million teams and found that only about 10 percent of people have the natural talents to be effective managers, and too often, promotions are based on previous performance, not leadership capability. Another study by LinkedIn suggested that Gen Zs are 50% less likely to want to be a team manager and would prefer an individual contributor path if one existed.
What we needed were dual career paths:
- One for those who want to lead teams.
- One for those who want to grow through expertise, strategic input, and influence, without direct reports.
Companies like Google, Meta, and Atlassian have had this for years – titles like Principal, Staff, or Fellow that recognize individual excellence and impact at the same level as leadership roles. They also think in “T-shaped” career models:
- Deep expertise in one area (the vertical bar).
- Ability to work across functions (the horizontal bar).
That kind of growth doesn’t require a team to manage, but it does require a different set of competencies: the ability to influence, create impact, and apply strong business acumen to drive outcomes across the organisation.
What We Did Next
What we did was quite simple.
We added an Individual Growth Path to our sales promotion playbook. We didn’t have it fully figured out. There was no big framework or roadmap. But we wanted to signal something important: there’s more than one way to grow here.
And that signal mattered. Soon after, one of our top salespeople came back to us and said,
“I believe I deserve to be a Director – and here’s what I can contribute in that role, without managing a team.”
Their case was solid. So we gave it a try. What followed surprised even us.
They stopped thinking only about their quota.
They started thinking about:
- Product improvements
- Negotiating better deals on behalf of the whole team
- Cross-selling across multiple products
- Supporting marketing with big projects
- And proactively mentoring newer team members
It wasn’t just a title change. It changed how they showed up and what they unlocked for the business. It created loyalty, sparked innovation, and helped us see the value of impact roles beyond people management.
Of course, depending on the maturity of your organisation, it’s not always easy or realistic to create roles like this for everyone, at every level. But just starting to think this way is already a shift in the right direction.
Since then, we’ve added a few more roles like this across the organisation.
They don’t follow a perfect blueprint, but they serve a clear purpose: to give people room to grow, contribute strategically, and stay deeply engaged, without forcing them into people leadership.
It’s not about designing the perfect org chart. It’s about being open to different paths and building the flexibility to support them.
Tetiana Mykhailiuk
SVP People & Culture at Bayzat: Tetiana Mykhailiuk is the SVP of People & Culture at Bayzat, with 18+ years of global experience across NGOs, multinationals, and tech start-ups. A certified performance coach, she brings a practical approach to leadership, performance, and culture, helping teams operate at their best while aligning people strategy with business growth. She has led large-scale transformations, supported businesses in hyper-growth and expansion across the Middle East, and is now building one of the region’s fastest-growing HR communities to help others grow and create meaningful impact.