Getting there

Have you ever read a leadership development book? It’s hard to categorize them all together because there are so many. But two categories do stand out. One group is oriented at people who need to learn to lead and motivate. They are all about getting groups fired-up and committed to goals. Another group is more like the "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me" of Stuart Smalley fame.

Neither of these categories works for engineers or software developers who need to learn leadership and management. We think in patterns and processes, not in rhetoric. The process of leading needs to be explained in terms that make it a technical function whenever possible. In fact, non-technical managers could use a dose of this approach to tighten-up their style, too. Of course there is a human element of the job that lacks a purely logical approach. That part may be the hardest to learn but it is not a reason to fail in a management career.

Few avenues support a natural evolution into a successful management career leading technologists. As with anything new, setbacks are unavoidable. Without a good coach or the confidence of conviction, potentially talented people can fall back into individual contributor roles bitterly confused, having failed for the first time in their successful technical careers. That is an unnecessary waste and it can easily be avoided with a management development approach that values and leverages a technical foundation. The win-win is that exploring leadership options will teach you a lot about yourself. No matter which way your career goes, you will be in the driver’s seat getting there.

Thanks for reading this Management Use Case. I'm the co-author of a new book on software development leadership entitled You.next() that features dozzens of other use cases for leadership. Please see more at www.youdotnext.com.