I was promoted to manager because I always helped my team learn new things about our work and was always given the task to coordinate big projects for us. After a certain point, I was doing more coordinating and coaching than actually doing the work. I also think that many of my reports now master the work subject and process much better than me. I have become more of a representative of my team, communicating inside and outside the company, managing deadlines, checking work quality, responding to other departments etc. but am less and less involved with the actual technicalities.
Imagine becoming a manager of business analysts, but not doing any business analysis anymore, not learning the latest techniques... just coordinating what the others do, giving them directions, implementing whatever the senior management wants to do, and checking that everything is done by deadline.
That is what's happening to me and I am not sure this is the right thing to do, especially since I am starting to notice that I always need to ask/double check with my team on things I could have easily known had I spent more time on the subject. I sometimes also get angry employees complaining to me about why senior management assigned us to do something that (as I am supposed to know) is completely unreasonable.
I have also increasingly delegated to my team members tasks and projects that once led me to my promotion (including being more visible across the entire company), which sometimes makes me feel worried about whether they will be better than me and promoted above me...
Do you think that as a new manager I should keep learning the subject, improve my subject knowledge (e.g. analysis skills), and stay ahead of my reports? Or should I just focus on managing and improving the team?
Must I always be in the spotlight, or should I make my team members get into the spotlight?
In other words, I am not sure whether I need to compete against my team members, or help them become like me.