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Index:
Introduction
The majority of the ICs (Individual Contributors) looking forward to being promoted into a well-deserved leadership role believe that it is just 'what is next in line', and they will evolve naturally into one. They fail to acknowledge that this level of step-up, is not just an upward promotion, but also, a lateral transition from their solo expert role to a way more broad and complex managerial one. Thus for many, the unpreparedness (mental as well as skill-based) leads to a prolonged whirlwind of struggles.
When you dwell into a managerial role you are right away looked upon as someone much more than just a subject-matter expert. You are expected to be a team builder, people manager, an easy-to-work and knowledgeable counterpart to your parallel stakeholders, and a voice of your own team and department. In short, this role brings an enormous number of responsibilities towards multiple stakeholders.
Undoubtedly, this requires preparation and gradual skill improvement, especially when one is not very far away from dawning the hat of a leader. Although the best training is ‘on-the-job’ and ‘in-the-role’, prior preparedness gives one a strong edge and makes the real-time experience a little less of a roller coaster ride. Let's delve into the intricacies of what you must possess to advance into a leadership role (Leadership/Leader and Managerial/Manager are henceforth used interchangeably throughout the article for better relevancy and fluidity).
Transitioning into a leader
Mindset Change
A leader’s mindset is substantially different from an IC’s and you must undergo a major shift in how you think and perceive. First and foremost you need to acknowledge that what worked for you to reach this point won’t be working henceforward. Unlearning is an important step in learning to become a leader.
Being a technical expert and an independent executioner may have brought you success as an IC, but carrying the same process forward is unwise because as a manager you are not here to showcase your technical by executing the tasks yourself, instead, you are here to build the teams that will do those tasks.
While ‘doing it yourself’ may bring momentary satisfaction, it is not sustainable in a manager’s role. This shift from ‘Doing All’ to ‘Delegating Effectively’ is a necessary shift for achieving success.
- Deani Hansen, Engineering leader, Productboard
While technical expertise facilitates choosing the right solution to your problem, it's only a part of the larger canvas. You need to base your decisions on broader business constructs like increasing the ROI, reducing the expenditures, increasing the efficiency, etc., and of course growth of your team. Therefore, even if your emphasis doesn't shift entirely, it must incorporate much more than just technical solutions.
The next factor which demands a change in mindset is accountability. While working as an IC you are responsible for your contribution whereas as a manager, you are responsible for your team’s performance. If a project completion is delayed, you cannot attribute the accountability to your team members, rather work with them in finding out what went wrong and what can be improved.
Being a manager also means changing your definition of success. As an IC, where your feedback loop was short and fast, managers aren’t lucky that way. Your impact as a manager may become visible after a long time and may even be too distributed to be explicit. Highs for a manager usually come from how their team is performing. Although growth in people comes after changes spanning months and years, this is a significant impact that can be attributed to a manager. The success criteria for a manager are much murkier than an IC’s, and therefore mental preparedness of not being driven by instant accomplishment highs will help you easily transition to such leadership roles.
- Jacob Baskin, Head of engineering, Coord
As a manager, your tasks or objectives will no longer be as specific as before. As you go higher in leadership positions the ambiguity increases. You may only be given the broader high-level objectives. It will be your job to derive the outcomes required and the actionable items for your team. Uncertainties will arise in the form of misalignments with multiple stakeholders or in the form of blockers owing to inter-team dependencies or ever-changing priorities of the business, and making decisions even when the picture is not clear completely, is a major change that you will have to deal with.
Exceptional Communication
The biggest differentiating factor for being an effective manager is communication. The way one communicates as a leader has to be much more than fluency in language and expression. Managers spend a huge amount of their time talking as compared to ICs. For all of you, who would have been zoning out with music playing in their headphones and working uninterrupted for hours as an IC, this will come out as a shocking change. You need to be prepared for attending non-stop back-to-back meetings with a myriad of stakeholders, talking, listening, and distilling information.
A lot of your time will be spent trying to unblock and align your team members and stakeholders. This is a tough job and you may need to hone your negotiation skills. Being in a cross-functional position, you need to be persuasive in order to inspire and align them to the purpose. This would help them to rally with you while still keeping in mind the priorities and eventually creating a support system for everyone. Also, managers need to be mindful of what and how they say, but at the same time be bold and ready to take stands while ensuring not to lose points on rapport and trust factors.
- Gilbert Amelio, Former President, and CEO, National Semiconductors
Great leaders are all practitioners of effective listening. It enables the consumption of knowledge and the development of perspectives. Listening will help you tune yourself to your surroundings. By engaging yourself mindfully in the conversation, you may be able to take note of unsaid cues, which a lot of time hold significance in deciding the further line of action. Listening patiently also shows that you respect others’ concerns and opinions thus building trust along the way.
Keeping communications succinct and context-steered is a good way to avoid repetitive efforts, where discussions may keep on going in circles. Although upward communication in the form of updates is common in both roles, it is much more complex for a manager because of multiple stakeholders (marketing, tech, product, business, or even HR). You have to be proactive in anticipating problems that may delay the timelines and diligently forward your concerns to your stakeholders, because this may have a direct impact on the business outcomes.
Information and Time Management Systems
It is quite obvious that managing so many people and making a million decisions requires strong context keeping as well as constant context switching. Although these skills build up over time, it is important to acknowledge that they can give a major boost to your performance and you need to keep working on it. A personalized system of data management becomes essential for supporting these skills because a simple to-do list is no longer going to work. Trying out different note-taking and organizing apps available in the market to choose which suits you the most is a good way to start creating your own information management system.
- Mathew Vanderzee, VP of Engineering eSentire
Managers often find themselves trapped in a busy-ness cycle, firefighting and jumping from one meeting to another. As a result, it would feel like a trivial endeavor at the end of the day.To avoid this trap one needs to be focused on the core objective which is to drive impactful and timely outcomes in the long run sustainably. Any meeting or task that one does not find contributing to this objective should be said ‘No’ to. While it is important to attend to every stakeholder, sometimes declining the unnecessary meeting invites is alright and in fact important so that you can channel it towards something that requires your intervention more. Devising a set of criteria that needs to be fulfilled for participation in any meeting and then following the system religiously is what will give you an edge with regard to both time and productivity. You would need some downtime to focus and deliberate to come up with efficient and effective decisions. And so, organizing a calendar wisely is also one important skill to include in your kitty.
Team management skills
A leader is incapable of performing his job efficiently without a good team, and it is arduous for the team to move forward in alignment with larger business objectives without a perceptive and motivating leader. As such, effectively managing your team is an uncompromisable aspect of any leadership style you choose to adopt.
Coaching your team members can yield significant mutual advantages. It makes your team feel that you are invested in their success and growth thus increasing their engagement and motivation. At the same time, it provides you an opportunity to start delegating more complex tasks to them, thus freeing up some more time for other responsibilities. For effective coaching, it is equally important to provide your team members with constructive feedback as well as applaud their successes. Similarly, empowering your team members to ask questions and make decisions is a great way to train them for the future. Balancing all of these requires practice, and therefore you may need to start making some efforts in this direction as early as possible.
- Beth Comstock, author, and former CMO & Vice Chair, GE
Another aspect contributing to the growth objective for your team is the curation of the work assignments. Allocating the right work to the right people and in the right priority, is a good way to do that. Also, keeping in mind your team’s aspirations highly contributes to trust building. Keeping transparency with the team members about your strategies involving them and linking their work to high-level objectives paints a clear picture of what success looks like for them. This keeps them engaged and motivated.
One-on-ones with the team members should be regular, and dedicated time slots should be reserved on your calendar for these meetings. They should be treated as platforms for equal facilitation of technical and non-technical discussions. You need to build rapport with your team members, such that they should be comfortable in talking to you on any subject, not be hesitant to bounce off their ideas, and flag the health of their task/project progress or even any negative practices around the workplace. Giving your feedback to your team members, but also asking the same from them is important to improve yourself and build a strong relationship with your team. Listening patiently to their concerns helps in taking cues as to what their current mental state is, which oftentimes signals the cause of concerns such as decreasing productivity and lack of motivation.
- Ben Horowitz, VC at A16Z, Author-The Hard Thing About Hard Thing
Another difficult aspect of team management is ‘emotion regulation’. Transference of your negative emotions to your team can affect the vibe within. It is important not to show aggressiveness or frustration in front of your team members when the meeting with higher-level leadership doesn’t go well. While keeping empathy with your team members holds value in building trust, it is also worth noting that too much of it can take a toll on your and your team’s performance.
Action Points
At this point, it is explicit that this transition is a tough one, and anyone who wants to glide through to a leadership role smoothly, should slowly but sincerely prepare for it. Following is what you can do to make your life as a new manager a little easier:
An Individual Contributor needs to be proactive in learning skills for his/her next step-up to a leadership role
Concluding Thoughts
There is no doubt that moving into a leadership role is a challenge, and that your work experience as an IC does not prepare you for such an intense transition. Problem-solving which is limited to only technical problems for an IC, is not so clearly defined for a leader. Majority of the challenges a manager's faces are related to communication and people management, which one might fail to value while working as an IC. Moreover, our industries don’t see the absence of people skills as a ‘lack’ in their growing ICs, often rewarding their technical focus in form of promotions, till they reach a leadership position where suddenly they are managing several people.
As such, it's a mistake to think that you can ‘wing it’, as and when the time comes. A leadership role rests between cross-functional groups and your team. Therefore, you have to keep high-level, long-term business objectives, as well as your team's welfare in perspective while making all the decisions. While this certainly makes it a tough terrain to navigate, you can make your journey a lot easier by making efforts towards development of required skill sets even before the opportunity knocks on your door.