In most organizations, technical experts who perform well will eventually be asked to lead a team and to deliver results through that team. This is because advancing in one’s career typically means moving into management, even if your area of expertise is unrelated to managing people. But being in management requires an entirely new set of skills. If you don’t learn these skills, you’ll likely end up underperforming and feeling frustrated.
Transform Your Technical Expertise into Leadership
People often get promoted into leadership roles because of technical or functional skills and expertise that enable them to perform well in their technical domain, but that don’t translate into effective leadership. They then struggle to inspire, coach, co-create, and build commitment to a shared vision. Many organizations fall short in filling this gap with the training and coaching needed to develop technical or functional experts into skilled leaders. If you’d like to become as expert in leading others as you are in finding technical solutions, the best place to start is by committing to ongoing self-directed leadership development. This involves identifying what you want to be able to do differently as a leader and why this development matters to you, broadening the perspective you’re applying to your leadership challenges, seeking input, and experimenting with new behaviors.