IT DEPENDS ON THE LEVEL
I’ve been kind of obsessed with the book The Leadership Pipeline about to how to become a manager or leader at various levels of the business.
I found a slide deck that contains a summary of the first 3 levels:
- Managing Self
- Managing Others
- Managing Managers
Managing Self
Everyone who works has to experience this stage. What seems the most distinct characteristic is that it requires specialist skills and the value is in personal output.
| Skills | Primary technical or professional skills, meet required standards. |
| Time: | Focuses on completing own tasks on time. |
| Values: | Accepts company culture and practices; exhibits professional pride; makes prudent uses of company resources. |
Managing Others
Apparently, the hardest thing about taking on this role is moving away from valuing your own contributions in terms of doing hands-on work! This is especially so because this role does still require specialist knowledge and therefore is usually filled through promotion from the specialist Individual Contributor role.
| Skills | Management skills including planning, assigning work, coaching and counselling, and measuring work of others, hiring and firing. |
| Time: | Work in an annual cycle not just project cycle; make time available for others. |
| Values: | Managerial work; helping others to accept company values; getting results through others. |
Managing Managers
This is the transition I am making currently, it’s a journey! It’s really all about coaching, integrating and resource management. Giving the first-line managers autonomy and relinquishing that direct control of workers is a toughie!
| Skills | Coaching Managers, delegation, choosing first-line managers, resource allocation. |
| Time: | Annual plans connected to functional strategy; spend time integrating across boundaries. |
| Values: | Helping others acquire management skills; free flow of information between units laterally; getting results through managers. |