Do you aspire to grow your career into a leadership position? Do you enjoy working for your company and want to be promoted from within? This article will explore how to gain critical skills your company needs to grow while fostering your career advancement. While looking outside your company for this opportunity may be an option for you, we’ll focus on how you can grow within your current company.
Transitioning into an engineering leadership role is a career goal for many technical professionals. Leadership roles are more critical than ever as companies seek to build higher-performing teams to grow the company. Moving into a leadership role is an excellent choice for many, and the rewards are great.
Know The Rewards and Risks
When it comes to this pursuit, there will be great rewards and risks. If you enjoy developing skills, coaching, and leading teams, you’ll love a career as an engineering supervisor or manager. Naturally, you’ll want to weigh the risks and ask yourself a few questions. Will you be able to seize or uncover the opportunities and assemble the right team? Will the changes that you bring be sustainable and translate to your company’s growth? Can you be an effective leader? These are a few questions you may ponder when considering pursuing this career direction.
According to McKinsey and Co, nearly half of new leaders fail. In addition, 79% of external and 69% of internal hires report that they didn’t find it convenient for their working environment to sustain any changes introduced by newly transitioned leaders. It may result from a psychological resistance against change in your working environment, amongst other factors.
Given that, let us look at those factors that can eliminate threats of failure in the transition of leadership and lead you to become successful in the transition phase
Take an Honest, Critical Self-Assessment
Before taking the plunge into any leadership position, the engineering professional must closely consider if this is really what they want. Will the new role make you
more fulfilled and bring career happiness? Do you want the new headaches that can come with a supervisory role? Taking a close and honest look at your goals is very important. There are many other directions one can take to career progression. Being an engineering leader is one of many options. Most Engineers find career-long fulfillment diving deep into their technical knowledge and gaining more industry expertise. Becoming the subject knowledge expert at your company and even your industry is advantageous. Ask yourself: “Do you feel you’ll be fulfilled leading a technical team vs. getting more advanced into your technical career?” Do you enjoy working with people, interviewing, coaching, mentoring, promoting and perhaps, correcting their behaviors?” Ask yourself if this is honestly what you’d enjoy doing full time. If the answer is “Yes!” then you know you should pursue a leadership career.
Successfully Transition into a Leadership Role
Working on becoming a manager while having served in a technical job includes polishing your management skills. After excelling in a technical role, polish these skills that, according to a study by CareerBuilder, are the most common management tasks:
- Resolving matters of conflict among team members (25%)
- Motivation of team members (22%)
- Exploring resource to bring improvements into the team (15%)
- Handling corrective actions and performance reviews (15%)
- Recruitment of new leaders and mentoring internal team members (12%)
How to Raise Your Leadership Skills
You might have noticed that all the challenges mentioned above can get solved by making your soft skills as strong as possible. The development of team culture and your employee’s abilities will be critical for your elevation as a leader. Here are some tips for raising your leadership skills:
- Don’t Try to Be a Super-Hero
Often, transitioned or newly appointed managers believe that they can perform roles better than anyone else, and this sense of being superior compels them to jump in and get the job done independently. The short-term tasks might be beneficial for the time being, but they will inhibit Success in the future. Managers have better results in teaching new skills to team members and grow the overall group abilities. The concept of “Delegate and Elevate” strongly applies here. Train your team members on tasks that are not at your highest skill level while improving your own role. Be patient and show team members how to perform new tasks to focus on developing the team as a whole. Instead of being the hero, train others on the team to shine and self-improve their skills. Over time, your entire team will grow incrementally.
- Stay Involved with Your Team
Often, rising leaders lose touch with individual team members and perform every task from their office. Without knowing it, leaders can lose touch with their team in no time. Instead, keep connected with your team members, help them learn new skills face-to-face, and show them how you’ve solved problems for your customers. Also, stay connected on a personal yet professional level and grow your work relationships over time. These selfless acts will naturally raise your team and will be noticed by management.
- Redefine Relationships
Moving from a staff employee to the job of manager might strain up your relation with your colleagues. You cannot be their best friend and most-liked person to everyone. Here, you need to redefine your relationship with your team members. Showing care for them and respecting their opinion can be good gestures to redefine and build a professional working relationship. Over time, your relationships will evolve from a peer-to-peer relationship to a supervisory with mutual respect.
- Celebrate Wins and Take Responsibility
Usually, this element is taken for granted most of the time, but it dramatically impacts employees’ or team members’ energy. Don’t take credit for Success personally, but give credit to others on your team. Celebrate the small victories weekly, even if it doesn’t directly impact sales. Celebrating an induvial or team’s accomplishment builds trust and confidence for the entire team. Being the cheerleader for shoutouts and mentions is contagious and builds the team’s rapport over time.
- Certifications, Awards, and Advanced Degrees Matter
It goes without saying that gaining additional certifications, industry awards, and degrees will only help your career. Understandably, many professionals don’t have time or resources for an MBA or a second degree. However, there is no shortage of educational opportunities to gain an advanced technical or leadership certificate online. Check with your local trade organization, previous college, or industry groups for ideas. Better yet, have a candid conversation with your manager and ask what they feel is an option for you to advance your skills. Quite possibly, your current employer may reimburse your tuition. Following thru on these courses and applying what you’ve learned is a great way to not only be more fulfilled in your role, it may well be noticed by leadership, and they’ll remember your initiative when considering future promotions.
Insights
Elevating to a leadership role can seem like an overwhelming task. But with careful reflection and professional growth, it is very attainable. Transitioning into a leadership role is crucial for your career’s Success once you establish that you’ll be very fulfilled moving in this direction.
Specific challenges might hamper your way to become a successful manager or supervisor. Still, at the same time, we have solutions to avoid all those hurdles to check the course of your progression. You can consult the points mentioned above and alleviate problems that a new manager experiences.
Tom Goettl, VP at Konik, writes about the intersection of technology and leadership for architecture and engineering professionals.