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

Accelerate your career through stretch assignments 2019

Do you feel stuck in your career?  You can accelerate by taking on stretch assignments. Take on roles that challenge you. Look for career opportunities requiring skills you want to develop. The point is to get out of your comfort zone. If you have strong technical skills, look for opportunities that challenge you to develop soft leadership skills. You can think of these assignments as lateral career moves. Instead of moving up the ladder, you move across in a different role that forces you to learn new skills. You can move up by applying these freshly minted experiences.

What do companies consider as stretch assignments? Employees take temporary assignments in different areas within their field. A hardware engineer might take on a 12 month assignment as a systems engineer or as a software developer. A financial analyst could rotate into accountant roles. A software engineer can stretch into an engineering program management position. These positions can be temporary, or they can evolve into more permanent positions. They must challenge the employee.

When you stretch, you will feel comfortable. You will find difficulties in your new role. You could feel like you'll fail miserably. You might wonder why you bothered. If you find yourself feeling this way, you must persevere especially if seek promotions into management. Stretch assignments will test your tenacity. They will make you question your abilities. A key note: good stretch assignments push you outside of your comfort zone, so you can learn and apply new skills.

I can attest this personally. I'm in a leadership development program (LDP) where I work. I've been through it twice. First, I rotated out of systems engineering into software engineering. Although I have a minor in computer science, it had been years since I programmed in C++. I forget many constructs related to object oriented software development. However, my team helped me, as I quickly learned a non-technical skill. You can ask others for help. In fact, you always need support from your team. They know their craft, and they want you to succeed. I recalled software engineering tenets including unit testing, configuration management, and test driven development. When I felt unsure, my team members pointed me to materials to hone my software engineering skills.

Not every skill you learn focuses on technology such as software development. If you intend to become a leader, you develop soft skills. Communication, time management, people management. Think of them as are forms instead of science. You will make mistakes. What ever you do, you must not become complacent in your role. Your team and program management depend on you to see your project through its next milestone. In leadership roles, you must learn how to manage your team, and you must communicate their concerns up to program management. Keep track of tasks and responsibilities, as your reputation will precede you. You should develop a reputation as a leader who can get through challenges. Your team and project management must rely on you.

How do stretch assignments accelerate your career? You volunteer for challenging assignments, and you lead them to success. You learn new skills that you transfer into promotions. I've been told that receiving a promotion is a matter of having the right skills at the right time. You must develop broad skills that you can transfer into higher levels. If course, you retain your central expertise whether in engineering, business development, or finance. Challenging stretch assignments broaden your skills because you lack skills you need for new roles. You develop new skills through on the job learning.

I give you my second personal example. I'm currently in a product engineer role. I own a software product my team develops. Ownership exists in a figurative sense. I own the software configuration management, software problems database, and the documents pertaining to the software package. Where do the challenges exist? First, I quickly learned the product: how to maintain it, compile it, install it, and test it while keeping track of customer delivery deadlines. Second, I must communicate status to program management while leading my team of software developers on an Agile schedule. This requires communication and commitment to keeping track of software problems and the software development solutions. Software products inherently exhibit complexities. Communication can lack quickly, so I must keep the problem database maintained at all times. I must communicate customer needs through project management down to the team. All this while keeping to the schedule.

Are stretch assignments worth your time? Absolutely! They can feel daunting, as you take on responsibilities in new fields. However, you will push through the difficulties. You will develop a reputation for excellence. You will learn new skills and master them. By broadening your skills, you will be ready for opportunities whenever they arise. You will accelerate your career because you learn more in short periods of time by taking risks. You take risks by taking on assignments outside your core area of knowledge. You develop new skills because you do not want to fail in your new endeavor. In the long run, you prove yourself worthy of promotions. You do this faster than peers who chose their comfort zones over trying new things. If you have an opportunity to take a stretch assignment, go for it. You will learn much about yourself and where you want to point your career.

Grow your career through challenging stretch assignments

Want to learn more about career advancement and leadership? Please read my prior posts on the subject:

• 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

Will you disregard important relationship advice?

I want to give. In life, it's the relationships that we form with each other that matter. We need to develop close relationships with other people. They could be our spouses, children, friends, or co-workers. We are not meant to sit alone in boxes isolated from the rest of the world. We often bury our heads in our phones or get sucked into video games or what not. It becomes easy to get frustrated with others and choose isolation. How is this affecting us as a society? How does it affect us as individuals?

I'm not sure how to answer the first question. Okay, I recant my previous statement: I can answer the question. I'm convinced my answer will stand the heat of logical debate. The lack of relationships makes us poor. We become poor in compassion, generosity, and caring for our fellow human beings. I know there exist plenty of examples of people helping others. That's great, and I make the world a better place one person at a time. Yet, I see so many examples of people hating other people for one reason or another. They're Mexican. They're Jewish. They're Muslim. They're LGBTQ. They're whatever they may be, perceived to be different and thus a threat. For each type of person, the haters give reasons for expressing their hate. They're going to take our jobs. They want to replace us. They want to kill us. They live in sin. So many reasons to hate, yet how well do you know these marginalized groups? Will they take our jobs? Do they want to replace us? Do they definitely want to kill us? Do they actually live their lives in sin?

Develop close relationships with people and get to know them better. Think of all the ways we can make this world a better place by listening to other people's stories. Visit a local mosque and learn how their congregants are attempting to live their own lives in peace. I know co-workers who are Muslim, and I respect them because respecting others is the right thing to do. For those haters of Jews, I can tell you I have no intention of replacing you. (Yes, I'm Jewish. I'm proud of it, and I'm not going anywhere because the United States of America is my home.) In fact, I'm trying get through this struggle called life like everyone else. I have a wife whom I love and have arguments with over and over again. It is outright difficult. Forming close relationships means you have to be vulnerable. You must admit your flaws and mistakes. (Click to Tweet) You must put yourself in the shoes of the other person even should they lack feet.

How does this lack of contact with other affect us as individuals? It makes us feel small and insignificant. What can I do, so future generations remember me despite being one out of billions on this planet? I see many ways to do this: become famous, write books people won't forget, do heroic actions in the face of danger. After thinking about this, I tend to think this is a wrong approach. Instead of being important to billions of people, I should become important to a few close people. One must develop close and intimate bonds with my family and friends. You should do wonderful things showing compassion, love, and generosity. This will make you remembered by future generations. What I mean is that you should not forget the people who love you. You should not forget that there are people in this world who are different. You can improve their lives through simple acts of love and kindness. Form close relationships with people who are not like you. Learn their cultures. What does it mean to be Hispanic? To be Jewish? Muslim? LGBTQ? Put whatever preconceived notions you might have aside. Get to know them as individuals.

Forming close relationships and bonds with other people is a never ending task. There will always be haters, yet there will be people yearning for close friendships. We will continue getting into arguments with our loved ones, yet we can work through those issues. Be vulnerable. Know that you will make mistakes, yet take responsibility for them. You should learn with the intent to improve yourself and your relationships. Get to know others, so you can know yourself. It will hurt at times. That is a risk you must take to develop your friendships and loving bonds.

Our world can be a good and nasty place. Many people what to do harm to others. This was true in the past, it is true now, and it will be true in the future. You can improve our world by showing love and kindness to one person at a time. Imagine a child who bullies others because their mother recently died. The father retreats into grief by displaying anger. If you can coach and mentor that child, show them love. Let the child know their father loves them, and it is okay to grieve a loved one.

Quite often, people choose hate because they feel isolated and unloved. You cannot reach each person who closed their hearts, yet form a bond with that person. This individual might have become the instigator of the next mass shooting had you moved on. Instead of responding with anger, invest time to understand their hate. You might need to reach within yourself and understand why you respond the way that you do. This is an opportunity for you to show them you are there for them and care. Open their hearts with patience, kindness, understanding, and compassion. You can improve the world one person at a time. (Click to Tweet)

Remember, our time on this planet is finite. Although future generations might forgot you and me, we must make positive impacts. Be positive forces in the lives of those close to us. By showing examples of kindness and compassion, they in turn will do the same. Not every single person we influence will do this of course, yet one or two will, and the pattern will repeat. Thus, you can have a great positive impact on the world by forging a few meaningful relationships. After all, quality not quantity matters.