How to decide to transition into leadership through four steps

You've been in your profession for years if not decades. You could be an engineer, computer scientist, financial analyst, or so forth. Do you stay into your current role, or do you transition into leadership? Of course, by leadership I mean taking on a role with manager as its title. I purposely wrote transition into leadership not into management for a simple reason. I believe that professionals in roles of authority should lead people, and they manage processes. Although you have a manager title, you have responsibilities towards your team. You lead them to success. You inspire them to seek continuous improvement through continuous learning. Leading implies you act as part of and for the team. Managing represents an off to the side style with a you versus them mentality. Manager is a title, and leader is a mentality or way of approaching problems that require team efforts. With this clarification, how do you decide if leadership is the right path for you?

Consider your Motivations

Why do you want a title of manager? Before you begin interviewing for management position, you must delve deep into that question. This is not just so you can convince your interviewers to hire you for that role. You must self-reflect, so you can make sure that you want to take on the added responsibilities that managers have. Grab several pieces of paper or your favorite note taking app. Make sure that you write down your thoughts, so you can review them on your own or with your mentor. You might find that you have several reasons for becoming a manager:

• Earn additional money
• Your current role no longer challenges you
• You enjoy mentoring and / or coaching others
• You like tackling the financial side of the business
• You enjoy giving others direction
• You find satisfaction in implementing technical strategies

Your list could include other items. It could omit some of the items here. What's important is that you truthfully write down why you want to become a leader who has an official management title. Some of your reasons could be valid, others not. By valid, I mean reasons that focus on taking a role for reasons that benefit you and others. For example, although it is true that managers tend to earn more money than regular employees, becoming a manager only for money could mean that you ignored the responsibilities that come with the role. You might think it's easy to tell other employees what to do, yet you would be in for a surprise when employees start coming to you with their problems.

Leadership: It's not just about you. You must foster an environment that ensures your team's success

Please do not get me wrong. I see nothing wrong with earning more money. Every person on this planet would argue they need more money. However, money cannot and should not be your only motivation for becoming a leader. Focus on doing your job well, and the money will follow. You will face challenges in a leadership role. For example, entry level members of your team might not know how to solve an engineering problem. Although you might be tempted to give them the solution, your better strategy would be to guide that junior engineer through the problem. Your goal would be to assist the employee in finding a viable solution. That engineer might know several possible solutions and might be stuck in deciding which one to follow. Your role as that engineer's leader is to be a coach. That can be a challenge because you would have solved that problem yourself in your previous role, and you must overcome that tendency for taking over. Additionally, you might not know how to clearly communicate the path forward. These things take practice, and not everyone wants to do that.

Of course, engineers who transition into leadership can face other challenges. For example, many engineers focus on finding technical solutions to problems that result in products. They might not have first hand experience in the financial aspects that drive customer need. How much is the customer willing to pay for a product? It might seem cool to you, yet the customer might not want it or know that it addresses their needs. How much does it cost to develop a product? What if develop costs overrun monies raised through sales? As a leader, you would need to estimate the answers to these problems and monitor over the lifetime of a product. It can be daunting for some, yet it can generate excitement for others. If you have not had experience in this capacity, I would highly suggest that you gain experience by proposing a project within your company, and managing the cost of the project throughout its life span.

Once you define why you want to transition into leadership, I suggest that you prioritize those reasons. I explain why below.

Prioritize Your Motivations

When you take on a new role, it might not address all of the reasons you took at that role. Another way to think about this is that your current role requires you to take on different responsibilities at different times. This is true for positions in leadership. Where am I going with this? You decide which of your reasons are most important for you. Then make sure they match with the role. Put another way, if you do not like working with other people, you will put that as a low priority. You will not enjoy a leadership role because it requires that you work closely with your team. However, if you enjoy helping people work though their issues, you will find fulfillment in this role.

Align Your Motivations to the Leadership Role: Your motivations will help you when the going gets tough.

Match your reasons for becoming a leader with the role itself. This exercise will help you learn the difference between what you perceive management roles to entail with reality of the roles. Although you can gain satisfaction from being a manager, you should understand that the roles have difficulties. You might need to lay off poor performing employees. You might need to inform the team of potential customers lost. However, you can bear good news. You can coach an employee who has been performing poorly to catch up before time for annual reviews. You can guide your team in making product improvements, so your company wins more customers. Much of this comes from your perspectives. Will your prioritize your motivations such that you avoid crucial conversations or do you embrace them?

At this stage, you might not be ready to decide. You might need more information to decide if leadership is right for you. How do you get this information?

Speak to Other Managers About their Roles

Start with your own manager. Seek out other managers you have worked with on projects. Ask them the following questions:

• Why did you decide to become a manager?
• What do you like about your role?
• What do you dislike and would like to change about it?
• What did you want to accomplish when you became a manager?
• What do you want to accomplish now?

Write down other questions that you believe are relevant to the role. This is not an interview for a position. You want to find out information. You want to learn the good and bad about the role. Ask as many people as you can. If you ask one person who became cynical, you might be convinced that management roles are not good for your career. Of course, you should consider their reasoning with a grain of salt, so you can understand constraints your company's culture would place on you. Make sure you take detailed notes!

Seek out other managers' insights because their experiences can help you decide if leadership is right for you

After you meet with managers, compare your notes with your motivations. How well does your perception of leadership roles compare to reality? If you still want to transition into leadership, reconsider your motivations. You might have missed something. It's important that you listen to what your managers have to say to you, as you might learn about reasons you never considered. Of course, your conversations with managers would serve as an indicator that you're interested in becoming a manager. This is an added benefit to your career, yet it is not your primary purpose for speaking to other managers.

Remember, you are on an information finding mission. If you decide that you want to become a manager (or not) during these talks, that's great for you. However, you might not be sure you are ready to transition into leadership. How do you make the final decision

Take on Stretch Assignments in Roles Outside Your Area

I've previously written on this subject. I mention it here because stretch (or rotational) assignments are ways for employees to decide if they want to transition into a new aspect of their careers. Think of it like renting to buy except you gain from the experience. You can take on a short (a minimum of six months up to twelve months) rotation in a role as a manager. The first few months will be the most challenging. You will need training and time to adjust to your new role. You need to focus on project goals from the beginning, yet your rotation manager will be there to help you. Remember that you must ask rotation managers questions. You learn not just be doing. You learn by allowing other managers to coach you. After all, they have more experience in this role, and they will help you succeed.

Stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. You learn new skills by being uncomfortable in situations that require success

Whatever role you take on, it is important to you do well. Few senior managers will want to hire you as a first line manager if you flounder in your rotation. That's why it's important that you ask questions, as this allows you to get continuous feedback. You will course correct as needed, and you will learn from that experience. There exists risk that you will do poorly in your new role because it forces you to learn new skills. However, you can apply the skills you have in this temporary role. I liken this to addressing fear of heights by taking on diving. You start out by diving off the one meter high board. You already know how to swim, so you will realize that you will be fine after jumping off the board. As you develop comfort on that board, start jumping off the next board. Of course, if you don't know how to swim, you will sink like a stone. Thus, you must take on a rotation in an area that allows you to develop new skills by applying skills you've previously mastered.

If you hate a rotation in leadership, you have your answer: Do not go into leadership. Otherwise, you could interview to make your rotation permanent. Alternatively, you could use the rotation as a lateral move into a different leadership position. You will find that your discomforts fade away as you gain experience in this new role. However, I advice that you periodically increase your challenge levels. This prevents you from becoming so comfortable in your role that you become complacent. After all, you want continuous feedback, so you can make sure that you are doing as well as you think you are. Part of leadership is receiving feedback not just giving it.

Summary

In this post, I discuss how you decide to transition into leadership. You can use four steps that apply whether you are in technology, finance, operations, or so forth. First, you consider your motivations for becoming a leader. Are your motivations altruistic? Do you want only the money and prestige that comes with the role? Or, go you generally want to help other people? If your motivations focus on working with other people and helping them succeed, leadership could be right for you. Second, prioritize your motivations. You will not being doing everything you think leaders do all the time. This serves as a check that what you want to get out of leadership matches what you perceive leaders doing. Of course, you might not know what leaders really do. That leads us into the next step. Third, speak to several managers about their roles. Ask them many questions to find out why they sought those roles. You want to know both the good and the bad. Managers need to make tough decisions, and you want to know that you can handle doing that. Of course, you can coach your employees to maximize their performance. How you handle the bad aspects will depend on your perspectives. Fourth, take on rotational assignments with leadership responsibilities. This will help you decide if leadership / management is right for you. You will take on roles that require you to lead others. You will need to learn quickly on the job. You will risk failure, yet your rotation manager will help you learn. You need to be brave and be willing to receive feedback. However, this will prepare you to becoming a manager. Look to your overall fulfillment in the role. If you enjoy providing technical guidance to your team and reporting status up to your managers, leadership could be right for you. I wish you best of luck in your career.

Do you want to learn more about engineering, career advancement, and leadership? Please read my prior posts on this subject:

• Why do emotions matter in our career? Give pause to your emotions using a four letter word
• How You can Lead Your Team to Success with Four Effective Leadership Principles
• Avoid the Complacency Trap Using Four Important Concepts
• Overcoming Introversion in Three Counterintuitive Steps
• How You Can Successfully Propose Your Engineering Projects using Five Principles
• Definitive Guide on Boosting Careers: How to Find Stretch Assignments
• Accelerate your career through stretch assignments 
• How to Market Yourself for Larger Paychecks and Promotions
• How to Evolve Your Stagnant Career towards Exciting Fields in STEM
• How to Turn Cynicism into Positive Action
• Sometimes leadership means cleaning up the mess you created
• Learn from your mistakes to build on your experiences

Sometimes leadership means cleaning up the mess you created

Several months ago, my manager put me in charge of organizing a Critical Design Review or CDR. This was not just any CDR. During this CDR, high school students from five robotics teams that my company supports would visit us and present their designs to company managers and their school administrators. As you could imagine, the CDR involved much planning over a period of several months. Some might say it was like organizing five weddings simultaneously.

To give you some background, robotics volunteering is a requirement of a Leadership Development Program (LDP) that I am in. This involved both mentoring high school students and planning the CDR. As the Director of the CDR, you might think I had it together. Quite the opposite: I over relied on email as my preferred means of conversation, and this naturally caused much confusion. To make matters worse, I shied away from delegating tasks to my LDP peers. Don’t get me wrong. I eventually made the CDR a success but not without creating a royal mess of things along the way.

How did I create a mess? After meeting with my LDP manager, she strongly suggested I delegate tasks. On the surface, this presented no difficulties, as I maintained an accurate task list. I even decided how to assign responsibilities. The mess, however, spilled out when I underestimated the effort needed to complete one such task: contact facilities to put them name signs on the auditorium row ends indicating where each robotics team would sit. I thought to myself, “that’s just an email to the facilities manager. I can do that myself.”

Oh, how wrong I was. It turned out that it did not fall under facilities’ roles and responsibilities to place seating markers. By putting out that request, I rubbed the facilities manager the wrong way. Word reached out events coordinator who promptly called me and yelled at me: everyone involved had no clue what they needed to do, I didn’t use services of administrators who offered their help, and the event is a week away.

At her advice, I organized a meeting with all of the people involved. I made a chart of the things that needed to be done and those responsible: lunches ordered, tables and chairs setup, audio visual systems setup, name badges to be ordered and put out, and so forth. By speaking with everyone on the phone, I left no confusion remaining. I double checked we had everything covered. The events coordinator who told me earlier that day later told me I was doing a great job.

In the end, the high school robotics CDR came and went with great success. What did I learn from this experience?

• Rely on your team and delegate. If you ask them nicely, they will gladly help you. After all, no one wants to fail.
• Get on the phone! In this age of email and IMs, it’s easy to forget in person communication. Of course, that doesn’t mean to not follow up with email. It means that you should speak to people directly instead of sending mass emails that could cause confusion.
• Focus on the positive. It was so easy to see all that I did wrong, yet I remembered to focus on what was going right. This prevented me from being too hard on myself when I need to push forward with the project.

What would I do differently if I was asked to organize a similar event in the future? Given that I discussed lessons learned with my team, I would include them all in the first planning meeting for the next event. This way, I would clearly communicate all the tasks required to make the next event successful and not create any messes along the way.

Learn from your mistakes to build on your experiences

One aspect of being an effective leader is the ability to learn from your mistakes. You can think of mistakes as opportunities to improve yourself. The first step to learning from a mistake is to admit that you made a mistake. I’ve made many mistakes throughout my career. For example, I interned at Disney Research while earning my PhD. After completing my PhD, I interviewed for a post doctorate position. Despite doing well on my internship and publishing a conference paper, I did not get the job. What happened? The research scientist I worked with left Disney Research to become a professor, and his replacement decided to take the research group in a different direction. I did not consider this. Lesson learned? When interviewing for a position, you must make sure that your skills and experiences align with the company’s strategy.

Once you admit your errors, you can reflect on what caused you to make it:

• Did you not listen when receiving a task? I’ve done this myself on many occasions. For example, I’ve allowed my mind to wander instead of listening to the person talking. Here, it’s important to not have any distractions. Take notes. I prefer an old fashioned pen and notebook.
• Did you misunderstand what was asked of you? It happens to all of us occasionally. Recently, I spoke to a program manager about setting up a peer review meeting. I noted that I should have the meeting in a couple weeks. When I received the meeting notice, he commented that we weren’t ready to have the meeting. Simple mistake made, so I cancelled the meeting.
• Did you overestimate your own abilities? You thought you had the skills necessary to complete your project, and you soon realized that you did not know what you’re doing. This happened to me when I took a stretch assignment in software engineering. A month into the assignment, I realized that I was over my head in writing a software application.bi spoke to my Agile team, and they gave me advice and assistance I needed to complete it.
• Did you not care about what you were doing? When you feel unchallenged, it becomes easy to not care for your quality of work. This is a dangerous place to be because you will develop a reputation for shoddy work. You get out of this mindset by proactively speaking to your manager. If you feel uncomfortable, speak to your mentor or someone you trust. I’ve had to complete administrative tasks multiple times. These can be boring, yet they need to be done. In fact, I’ve helped my manager in the past by volunteering to complete project plans.
• Did you not double-check your work? This is a common mistake whether one writes software, documentation, or designs hardware. In fact, it is different to find your own mistakes in your work because we all become blind to our own endeavors. There are multiple ways to prevent mistakes. Take a break if you get tired. I’ve found myself in situations when I’ve worked long days and returned the following morning to correct the errors I created because I was tired. Alternatively, hand your work over to a colleague to look at it. A fresh pair of eyes can find flaws you missed. In fact, this is the general idea of peer reviews: people unfamiliar with your work will mark your errors to help you improve.

I could list many more examples why people make mistakes. The important things for you to do after admitting errors are to reflect on them and learn. You should ask how you messed up and write ideas on how you can do better next time. Although it can be easy to dwell on your missteps, you should put them aside and not be hard on yourself. As long as you learn your lessons, you will do better next time.