Several years ago, a consultant from Texas named Guy Clumpner worked my my organization. One of Guy's major areas of emphasis was how to shift -- both in your thinking and in your actions -- from a management mindset to a leadership mindset.
He drew a simple diagram on a flipchart with five competencies -- three of which he said we focused on effective management, and two of which were at the heart of good leadership.
We're hired, Guy said, for our technical skills. The management of knowledge -- knowing specific pieces of information or technical skills or basic work competencies -- is what lands most people into jobs. Some people stay there for years, or forever -- I worked with veteran mechanics who couldn't imagine doing anything more than coming in every day and repairing another engine.
But I also worked with mechanics who were more valuable to the organization when they could harness that encyclopedia of knowledge about repairing equipment and direct their energy toward teaching others, or managing other mechanics.
Our planning skills, then, can make us more valuable to the organization. As an information technology project manager, your value increases when you can calculate how many hours of coding and testing is required for a major systems upgrade -- because of your past experiences and your technical skills. Or because you studied hard and received your project management certification. But our management of organization helps us help the organization by playing traffic controller -- with people, projects and more complex tasks.
The penultimate management skill, however, is problem solving. Problem solving lives in two distinct spaces -- it essentially focused on the management of people and the management of things. This is where most managers spend their time, and where they get into the most trouble.
The management of things is not usually the issue. That's often a broader plateau to leverage those technical and planning skills that got us this far down the chain, or up the ladder.
It's the management of people that tends to get managers in trouble. Managing people starts our rather benignly -- organize people to get the work done. We schedule and check in. We direct and redirect. We provide resources. And then people do the craziest thing -- they ask for our help, or they make a mistake, or they get surly.
That's when we start thinking of people who need our support and guidance as problems needing to be fixed. The problem with that management technique is that people don't like being fixed by other people. In fact, they resist it.
But if we can climb this rung on the ladder successfully, we find ourselves in over our head -- in the realm of leadership. The core skill in effective leadership is the ability to influence, which is essentially the management of others. It's where we most often fail.
The curious thing about that is that the failure often comes because we don't realize that the top of the ladder is critical to being successful at problem solving and influencing. The management of self is the most important competency of them all, especially for anyone aspiring to effectively lead, influence or manage others.
Figuring that out, and then discovering what to do about it, is one of the hardest journeys out there.
