“What you didn't learn in college is limiting your growth as an engineer, technical professional, and manager; and what you didn't learn are the Interpersonal People Skills (the Soft Skills) necessary for long-term success."
“For the engineer or technologist it's about learning the soft skills that allow you to deliver maximum results to your organization...
and...
For the engineering functional manager, the program, product, or project manager, director, or C-level executive, it's about maximizing results from your professionally diverse and geographically dispersed team."
Learning how to succeed as an engineering manager and leader
in a technical role or in a technical organization
demands that you
take off the technology blinders and give up the habits
that you've perfected as an engineer and technologist.
You began your career as an engineer/technologist. You did a good job. Then you were given additional responsibilities as a team lead or project manager.
And now you're getting hammered. People don't listen, schedules slip, your meetings are difficult, you're stressed, and you're thinking, "Just let me get back to my engineering."
I can guarantee you it doesn't have to be this way. You can make your way out of this painful situation and into the area of strong, successful technical management and leadership...
But... it will take a phase shift on your part.
Because...
What you learned in college is limiting your growth as a technical manager and leader.
The first step in getting out of this fix and moving to success is knowing what's missing from what you want? You'll succeed more when you know what you need to add to your "toolbox" to be successful. You'll succeed more when you can move your team in the same direction. You'll succeed more when you can get people to stop working their own agendas and start working for the good of the project and the team.
The key to your success is what they didn't teach you in college, the "soft skills". Soft skills are the "communication and people skills" that turn engineers into great managers and leaders". A soft skill is not the same as a hard skill. "Hard skills" include budgeting, scheduling, and task development, but "soft skills and interpersonal people skills" include:
Successful technologists have learned to look and pay attention to what's directly in front of them and to use the quantifiable and reliable data they can count on to do the work they do.
In fact, what they are relied on to do is to generate results that are reliable and can be counted upon.
As a manager or leader, the information that you have available is often at best fuzzy and there is no way to turn that into reliable quantifiable data before the fact.
Successful technologists are looking for reliable, unambiguous, quantifiable data. Successful technical managers know they have, at best, fuzzy, unreliable data. The role of the technologist is to build the product, to solve the problem.
In fact, the
role of the manager or leader
is to project the organization they lead into an unknown future and to bring together the resources at their disposal/command even when that outcome may seem unreasonable or unreachable by others.
This requires communication excellence and personal flexibility. It requires the ability to understand and evaluate each management situation based on it's unique aspects, something I call Contextual Definition. It requires understanding what are the functions of the successful manager and leader The Six Functions of Successful Leadership.
And it requires the ability of the manager to select, not their favorite management style, but the management and leadership style that is most suited to the situation, The Hierarchy of Management Styles. This is optimally effective leadership!
Putting this all together allows you to be a successful individual engineering contributor or to successfully Advance Up the Technology Management Ladder.
Up until now you could count on improving and perfecting your skills by taking one step after another. However, the next step for you demands a leap. A phase shift. And rather than always having the comfort that one foot is safely on the ground until you transfer your weight to the foot that's landing, this will require you to have both feet off the ground at the same time.
Even the best performers learn to fly using a safety net.
The best safety net is not someone who has observed what you're going through from the sidelines. The best safety net is someone who has lived what you are living, right now.
Steven Cerri began his career as an aeronautical engineer, advanced to geophysics, and then became a technical manager, and general manager of a large software company. As someone who has struggled with the issues of being a technologist in the role of technical manager and leader, Steven knows that it's not an easy world to
navigate.
It's more like a satellite traversing an asteroid belt.
Everyone who wants to be a professional at what they do, at some point in their career, needs a safety net. And Steven can be your safety net. Steven can guide you through the surprises, the difficulties, the dark and light corners, to the other side, to the clearing, where your decisions move the team and the project forward smoothly.
Steven will bring the safety net of his experience to teach you to do these things on your own in the shortest amount of time and in the most elegant way possible.
The safety net is called personal coaching and training. Each approach provides you with a specific form of learning and a specific safety net. Depending on where you are in your career and what you want one might be better at the present time than the other. And there is only one way to find out. Either send Steven an email requesting a free phone consultation or call him directly at
+1-925-735-9500 to discuss what you want to accomplish now.