SparkPilot blog

I’ll never forget when a mentor asked me:

Are you a good leader?

Duh, all of the reasons why people wanted to be in my org went through my mind. She knew that my organizations had exceeded expectations the last three years……then a nagging feeling took hold of me. I asked why she was asking this question? She asked another question:

How many of the people reporting to me today, could deliver the results in two years?

Again that avoidance thing rushed forward to protect my fragile ego…I tried to avoid answering the question by debating the number years. She wouldn’t have it! I tried to protect myself knowing full well that she was about to crush my ego and educate me! Here is what she had to say:

Good for me that the teams were delivering above expectations but I was still a key ingredient of the recipe. Because I wasn’t growing leaders to replace me, or grow leaders to export; this all all about me and my ego. I making sure that I was an integral ingredient of the recipe, thereby making sure that I was needed.

Ouch!! Since then, I now operate in a manner to try to put myself out of a job. It is waaaayyyy more difficult than it sounds and I continue to struggle with it, to get more interesting posts to read, we recommend to check the new peloton compatible shoes review. All of this being said, I can now say that I have managed to help a number of people to grow into roles where they are now working on this same challenge.

How many leaders have you helped create?

Hmmmmm.  Considering all of the bale outs and the increased diligence on keeping companies honest, it seems that higher ethics are not valued.  At least that is according to this Harvard Business Review email.

http://web.hbr.org/email/archive/dailystat.php?date=051412

One of the common questions I get about moving to the next level via the management road.  i.e.  should I move from an individual contributor role into management ?  Or should I move into a 2nd level management position from a 1st level management position?  To help highlight the difference, here is how I see the differences.

Individual Contributor

• deliver the results
• role skills – the skills are task related
• communication skills definitely help
• realistic work forecasting is a significant benefit

1st level manager

• care about the people on the team
• deliver the results as part of the team
• still have the role skills – not only for IC deliverables but also for coaching employees
• IC recruiting
• communication skills
• start to understand how to grow people
• need to do work allocation for the team
• responsible for the well being of the team
• work forecasting needs to be done for the team
• soft skills to deal with people (down, peer and up)
• delegation – most difficult one – how to delegate work to the team

2nd level manager

• people
• deliver the results through the work of others
• people growth
• manager recruiting
• succession planning
• communication, negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• realistic work forecasting needs to be done for the team
• need to deal across groups, ideally joint objectives
• soft skills to deal with people
• budgeting
• manage team visibility

Please let me know if I missed anything.