Today I returned to “Becoming a Manager“, a book lent to me by my Director months ago. It’s actually interesting to return to it now, as my perspective has shifted since I started reading it. At the time, I was starting my transition into Business Analyst, still an individual contributor role. However, as time goes on I feel the call to advance in my career and start to take on more advisory/mentoring/management responsibilities.

For a long time, I’ve commonly associated “management” with managing resources (baby-sitting?), and “leadership” with fostering individuals’ growth and potential. It finally occurred to me today that these do not have to be mutually exclusive activities, and I feel that a management role would be an ideal outlet for me to share my knowledge and experience with a team. While I am happy to offer my expertise on a single project, I feel a strong desire to help nurture and foster the development of others beyond what I can do as an individual contributor (part of my motivation for sharing my thoughts and opinions on this blog).
I recognize that this approach to management is not shared by everyone. Indeed, “Becoming a Manager” even calls this dichotomy one of the “four conflicting forces at the heart of team life” (pg 297). These forces are:

1. Embracing individual differences vs. Embracing collective identity and goals
2. Fostering support vs. Fostering confrontation
3. Focussing on performance vs. Focussing on learning and development
4. Relying on managerial authority vs. Relying on team members’ discretion and autonomy

For the third point, I definitely know I fall firmly on the right side (focussing on learning and development). I recognize that developing the individual for the benefit of the team is better suited to an internal team than a consulting company, as all the benefits are realized internally. However, I still feel it is generally just a best practice to have an overall strong team (even if some level of training is required to get there) than just a few outstanding players. I think this contributes to higher quality deliverables and easier sharing of resources across projects. My beliefs were reaffirmed as I read the following:

Our competitive environment causes a great deal of pressure for employees to focus on current performance…devoting attention to the long-term health of the team, setting strategic direction, and building team capabilities is critical.

One challenge I am starting to encounter as I look to “the next step” in my career is, well, the step up. The book touches on this as well - the idea of management development:

The recipe for management development is easy to recite but difficult to implement because of the performance versus development trade-offs outlined earlier. For example, if you have an important project that requires leadership skills, do you give it to a manager who needs to develop those areas as a stretch assignment, or do you give it to someone who already knows how to do it?

I definitely consider myself in the pool of people looking for stretch assignments. I have held leadership positions for much of my life, but have yet to hold such a title. But how to get there?

I know that my style as a manager would be to continue to focus on team rather than individual development and management. I believe that was what held me back from the notion of “manager”, because I only saw the one-to-one aspect of it. At LexisNexis we had the role of team lead, which greatly appealed to me. It wasn’t about being “in charge” of everyone, it was about fostering an environment in which everyone could succeed.

I think I have finally found the way to integrate the various aspects of my personality and passion. My background in user-centered design and user experience causes me to always try to think of the recipient of my actions, which transcends the work of an individual contributor and may also apply to how best to communicate with team members. My language and linguistic training have made me ever aware of barriers to shared knowledge and effective communication. My desire to see my colleagues succeed (fostering community) while developing each team member’s own capabilities (and thereby producing the best possible quality deliverables ).. this finally seems to be a role that fully embodies what I love to do. I’ve always said that technology for me was simply the medium I used to foster communication and community. And perhaps that’s not even true: technology was the tool I used to create an environment that could be used to foster communication and community. I was an additional step removed. I am now looking to become more directly involved in these actions, to empower and help develop others.

Hm. I guess that means it was a good book.