Specialist to Leader, how do our people make the leap?

Before I was a Leadership Instructor and before I was a comedian and talent manager, I was a coder. Somewhere around the turn of the millennium, I graduated Computer Science with first class honors from the University of Newcastle in Australia. I dutifully got a job at a small software company and began to work on software projects for clients. Soon enough I was in the position to run a small project of my own –  I was a Project Manager. However, that title alone doesn't belie the breadth of the skills I had to master. I wasn't just running a Gantt chart & budget as the title would suggest, I had another variable I had never encountered before: people.

I was leading a team and I had no idea what I was doing.

In retrospect it seems kind of crazy. What exactly in my four years of Computer Science study made me believe I had the ability to be a Project Manager or... heaven forbid... a leader of people? I did have more than a small dose of youthful arrogance. Surely, being a PM was just reading a book and having a handy copy of Microsoft Project, right? Years of Dilbert comics made me believe that all managers did was push Excel sheets around, and that the real work happened with the engineers. I told myself I could do this stuff in my sleep.

What about leadership? At least I could define Project Manager as a position with a few, if undervalued & most disregarded, associated skills. If you asked me to define leadership, I would have told you something about the ability to inspire people and to get them to do things. A leader was a state of mind, something you were born with. I probably understood you could improve at leadership over time but I had zero idea that it is a set of skills which one can learn, practice, assess and improve.

What I experienced was a classic example of the "Peter Principle", the idea that employees will get promoted until they find themselves in a position they are not skilled or qualified to do. What was originally written in 1969 as a form of satire has become the reality for many modern workplaces. "We are a company who installs home security systems and Barry here is the best home security installer... so let’s reward Barry with a promotion to head of home security installation... with job responsibilities which now involve everything but actually installing home security systems..."

I believe the issue isn't that Barry is incompetent as a manager (as the Peter Principle may suggest), rather he just has never been taught the skills needed at that next level.

He has not been taught the skill of leadership.

No one is born with the knowledge to effectively lead teams. There may be some innate traits that might cover some deficiencies, but in the end, effective teams are led by people who learn how to lead.

Recognize Leadership as a Skill

I used to think leadership was something one was born with and couldn’t be consciously improved (if I thought about it at all). I now understand leadership is a skill and it can be trained, practiced and assessed like any other skill. The loop is familiar, we need to get some theory to understand what we are doing, then most of our time needs to be spent either observing leadership or practicing it ourselves. We also need some feedback so we know where our weak points are. How well do we learn the piano by listening to an instructor? Somewhat, however, the bulk of our learning happens when we practice. It’s straightforward to understand that if I want to be good at an instrument, I need to put in the hours every day. I then still need sessions with the instructor to provide feedback on my technique and I can practice some more.

You can also take steps to recognize that leadership is valued in your organization. When I am mentoring young people I try and convey the message “get this right and you will have the #1 skill needed to progress not just in our company, but your whole career”. Try to link these learnings closely to the advantages specifically to the employee.

Leadership Means Influence

Leadership doesn't mean giving orders to those below you. Such expectation of compliance rarely works and if it does, then only for a short period of time. We can't make someone do something; we can only influence them to act in the right direction. Given that idea, leadership then becomes something I can do to everyone around me. A manager can influence their team. I can also influence my colleagues at the same level. I can also show support and influence my boss. Using this mindset, it is entirely possible to lead up the chain of command.

How do we get others to be influenced by me?

By letting them influence me first. Relationships are the core of leadership, if we don't have solid relationships, we have no foundation to build anything. The way we build relationships is by offering support to those around us. Don't wait for the other person to offer support to you. Build up that relationship capital by supporting your colleagues in tasks which help the team win.

If I had to brainstorm some attributes, I would like my team to show me, I might come up with: trust, listen, respect, care. I need to show these to my colleagues first. Take the first step.

Top-down leadership is good, but it doesn't have to be

I proposed above that leadership isn't a boss telling people what to do. It is support and influence and that can be shown at any level in the chain of command. I had the pleasure of giving a keynote in one of the iDeal stores in Tallinn and while the talk was going on customer service representatives still had to help clients who walked into the store. Right there in front of us, in real time, we saw an example of the way even a front-line retail worker is a leader. When a customer walks in with a problem, the staff member becomes a leader of that customer. They need to guide and influence the client, taking the client's problem and making it their problem.

In your organization, it would be awesome if your senior management recognized the value of leadership at all levels and took steps to mentor, coach and develop these skills from the top down. However, if that is a struggle, start from the bottom up instead. Implement leadership skill training for your most junior team members or indeed anyone else who sees the value of these skills. Not everyone will understand this right away and that's ok. Start with those who want to consciously improve themselves and let them influence the rest of the team.

While it would be great if these ideas were coming strategically from the top down, if you started with a group of fired up, switched on junior team members who understood the value of building relationships, coming up with a simple plan and focusing on priorities, I think your organization would be in a great starting position.

Author: Louis Zezeran, Combat Ready Leadership Instructor