Job Titles in Leadership Are A Mess: Let’s Clean Them Up
By Russell Bourne
I’ve noticed some extreme disparities in how different levels of leadership titles are defined in today’s SaaS and SaaS-adjacent workforce. If a title of a certain seniority level overlays poorly against the expectations and realities of what the role - and the person’s actual skillset - actually are, the results can be counterproductive or even devastating.
A senior-level Sales rep with no strategic planning or change management experience might have a VP title and suddenly find themself designing and leading a major initiative - not a formula for success! A Director who is the highest-ranking member of the Marketing team may be left out of a strategic planning session - also bad.
For companies looking to hire a leader, and for job seekers looking to lead, mismatches between the title a job is posted with and the actual expectations of the job can lead to enormous amounts of wasted time in the application and interview process, and a bad-fit hire can set the company back months, if not more.
To help get everyone speaking the same language, I’m going to offer definitions, along with a few best practices and pitfalls to be aware of, for the different levels of seniority in leadership roles. These are compiled based on many years of observation and best-practice development on the part of all of us at The Success League and iterate on our stage presentation at the 2022 Pulse conference.
A Team Lead is an individual contributor who takes on a limited number of leader-like tasks. Typically, they don’t have direct reports or actual authority. Used correctly, a team lead role allows a person to gain experience and skills that will ease their transition into a full-time leadership role. Used incorrectly, a team lead assignment can linger into a perpetual player-coach situation that doesn’t serve the individual, the team, or the company.
Manager roles lead a single functional team. A manager holds formal reporting lines to individual contributors and shouldn’t carry any IC responsibilities of their own. Usually, managers lead ICs who all have the same role. For example, a Manager of Customer Success manages a team of CSMs, a Manager of Support manages a team of support agents, and so on. Managers don’t have a significant amount of strategic planning responsibility and are mostly focused downward on delivering against their team’s goals, for which they’re accountable.
A Director is a leader of leaders. Specifically, Directors lead leaders who all lead the same type of team. In a medium-to-large SaaS company’s CS function, that typically means there are multiple Managers of CS who roll up to the Director. In addition to leading leaders, it’s still appropriate for Directors to lead some individual contributors - typically these are roles with too few headcount to justify a team manager. Directors guide the functional strategy of the group they cover.
Vice President positions are also leaders of leaders, but those leaders lead a variety of team types. For example, a VP of Customer Success might lead a Director of CS, plus a Manager of Onboarding, a Manager of Expansion Sales, and so on. The other key distinction VPs have versus Directors is that VPs are accountable for company-level metrics, and as a result VPs often focus their work laterally on relationships with cross-functional VP peers. If a VP covers a functional area that lacks a C-level leader, the VP may participate in executive or board sessions.
C-level Executives can have one or more VP as a direct report, but they primarily focus upward and outward. That means they develop company strategy and are accountable to external parties, like the company board and investors. Accordingly, their work often revolves around big-picture topics like their industry, the overall economy, and how the company strategy will navigate them.
Inflated and Deflated Titles
Of course, many readers read the last section and thought, “That’s not how it is in my company!”. Besides simply being unaware of norms, there are a variety of reasons a company might either inflate or deflate someone’s title.
Title inflation is when a person holds a title that is higher than their actual job function suggests. Often we see this in early-stage companies where, for example, a VP of Sales has no direct reports, performs direct selling tasks daily like an IC would, and is sometimes the only employee on the Sales team. The expectation in this case is likely that as the company grows, the VP will be able to hire a team and transition into the actual VP role they’re qualified for. Other times, title inflation happens to signify importance to internal or external parties - a true Director might be given a VP title so customer VP-levels accept business review invites from them or feel satisfied with the escalation level. And finally, a company might agree to title inflation to retain the employee, with or without a corresponding salary increase.
Title deflation can be tricky to navigate because it’s often a response to pressure from workplace politics or money. A VP with multiple reporting Managers might ask one of the Managers to take on leadership of a second, different type of functional group. By the definitions above, that Manager should become a VP, but most companies rightfully wouldn’t skip-promote a Manager to a VP, most companies wouldn’t allow a VP to report to a VP anyway, and the company may hesitate to promote the VP to a Sr. VP for any number of reasons.
Another example would simply be when a Manager asks an IC to take on team lead responsibilities without giving them a Team Lead title. This could be due to subconscious scope creep, a way to get extra productivity without the formal title, or to avoid disgruntling or losing a peer whose ego would be hurt if passed over for the role. Unfortunately, as you can see from these examples, title deflation is often a way for companies to skirt promoting people into higher pay bands.
Head of
Finally, a title that has created controversy in recent years: Head of ___. Typically but not exclusively used by early-stage companies, Head of is an ambiguously-powered title. It creates disclarity internally and externally as to whether the role is strategic or tactical, junior or senior, or has or doesn’t have a seat at the table. My hope is anyone reading this who is in, or is considering, a Head of role can accurately identify what the role should be called, and can self-advocate as necessary.
The state of the SaaS economy since 2022 has had its share of uncertainty carrying into early 2025, but there are signs that things will settle into an equilibrium this year. May titles and expectations lead the charge.
Looking to get into CS Leadership? The Success League is a cutomer success consulting firm that offers an accredited CS Leadership Certification training program. Find out more at our website, TheSuccessLeague.io.
Russell Bourne - Russell is a Customer Success Leader, Coach, Writer, and Consultant. In a Customer Success career spanning well over a decade, his human-first approaches to leadership and program management have consistently delivered overachievement on expansion sales and revenue goals, alongside much friendship and laughter. Russell serves on the Board of Gain Grow Retain as co-lead for Content Creation. He is passionate about equipping individual contributors and business leaders alike to lean on their Success practices to grow their careers and help their companies thrive. He holds a BA from UCLA, and in his free time plays guitar semi-professionally.
