Most IT professionals do not start their career looking to become leaders. Yet as they progress throughout their work, many skilled IT leaders will find themselves inevitably placed in positions of leadership, often unprepared for the journey that awaits them. While this may be true for many different types of professional, for IT leaders, there are special things to communicate about leadership to make any leadership training for IT effective:
Leadership is not logical (but they wish it were!)
IT professionals are skilled at logical and systematic problem solving. Faced with challenges or the development of a new system, IT professionals succeed because they are trained and experienced in thinking in algorithmic ways. Because leadership is people driven, it rarely follows exact patterns of cause and effect- a difficult change in thinking for some IT leaders.
Imperative Relationships and Imperative
Whether leaders are leveraging their networks or managing alignments, exceptional leaders understand the importance of relationships to get the outcomes their organization needs. While IT professionals exceed at reacting with agility and resiliency, relationship-building at the leadership level takes concerted efforts and time that is often not seen as a valuable short term investment. The good news is that if an IT leader understands and internalize the potential advantage of building relationships and learns, they can quickly learn the skills needed for their success.
Leadership not what you do, it is how you think
A strong sense of self-awareness enables leaders to be better equipped with interacting with others. IT leaders are much more familiar with the outcomes of what they or their team does and spend less time understanding how they or others think and are wired to respond. In the longer term, taking the time to become more self-aware garnishes greater results for themselves and the people they work with.
Leveraging the Differences
The journey to become an IT leader often begins with exceptional work as an IT professional. The unique skills for embracing dexterity, innovation and application of intellect are valuable commodities for this profession. Those skills, if leveraged towards leadership, can produce phenomenal outcomes if tailored toward the leading of others.