[simaracode]

Start by being a leader without being a manager (manager are made from leaders in individual contributor roles), ask for stretch assignments when some leader is OOF, ask for shadowing to a respected middle manager and ask for advice. And final piece of advice, ask point blank (not aggressively): What do you think I need to be a manager? What do you think I’m missing.

[starbeast]

Thanks for the advice. I think also some of it might just be that I have mainly had jobs for smaller companies which have a relatively small percentage of management positions available compared to larger organisations. So as they tend to only have a handful of people in the middle between the executives and everybody else, there are just less management positions there to start with and they tend to either go to the existing friends of the executives or professional managers hired from outside.