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What It Takes To Become A High Potential IT Leader

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Image Credit High Potential IT Leaders Are The Ones Who Become Successful

High Potential IT Leaders Are The Ones Who Become Successful

What is it going to take to make your IT Leader career a success? Sure, you can deliver IT value and get your projects done on time, but will that be enough? The answer is no. For you to be seen as a successful IT Leader you are going to have to be seen as a “high potential” IT Leader – one who is going to go places beyond your current assignment. Clearly you need to know what it’s going to take to get others to consider you to be high potential…

The Intangibles

The reason that many IT Leaders get stuck in their current job with the current responsibilities is because others don’t believe that they have “what it takes” to handle other responsibilities. The things that it will take for you to be viewed as being a high potential are intangible (can’t really be expressed in words) and generally can’t be written down on job descriptions or yearly evaluations.

The good news is that Dr. Douglas Ready and a team of researchers have been looking into what it takes for an IT worker to move from regular to high potential workers. They’ve uncovered four factors that can transform you from everyday to high potential in the eyes of others.

Drive Time

Do you have what it takes to succeed? Can others tell that you have this drive? Just being good isn’t enough for you – you have to want to be great and it needs to show.

The key here is that others need to be able to determine that you are willing to make the extra effort to succeed. This means that they are going to have to be able to see you make sacrifices in order to advance in your career. Everyone has to know that your personal life comes second when it comes to your job.

The Ability To Learn / Do

High potential IT Leaders are always learning new things. However, this isn’t enough. Just because you are willing to constantly be learning new things doesn’t make you a high potential IT worker.

Instead, you need to show others that you have the ability to not only learn new things, but to also take what you’ve learned and apply it to what is happening right now. The use of new ideas to make IT more productive for the company is what is going to set you apart from everyone else.

Become A Risk Taker

Despite all of us understanding that IT is all about change, it can be too easy for IT Leaders to get comfortable in their jobs. When this happens, they lose the desire to take new risks and they are no longer viewed by others as being high potential IT Leaders.

What we need to do is to be willing to take on new ways to make the company more productive. Sometimes this involves starting a risky new project, or developing a new set of IT skills that will require us to leave what we already know behind.

Develop Your “Spidy Sense”

The comic book hero Spiderman has what he calls his “spidy sense” which tingles when there is danger approaching. High potential IT Leaders need to develop their own version of this type of sensing that allows them to detect when a danger to their careers is approaching.

Career dangers can include such things as projects that are doomed to fail from the start, or avoiding providing feedback to senior managers that could help the company do better. High potential IT Leaders have a highly developed sense that allows them to know when to push forward and when to pull back.

What All Of This Means For You

Just being a IT Leader is not enough. In fact, just being a good IT Leader is not enough either. What you want to be is a high-potential IT Leader . This will open doors to new opportunities at the firm that you are working for and at other firms also.

In order to start to be seen as being “high potential”, you are going to have to start doing several things. These include showing a keen sense of drive to succeed, the ability to both learn new things and then apply what you’ve learned, take proper risks, and sense when an opportunity is either a good thing or a bad thing for your career.

The good news is that any IT Leader can become a high potential IT Leader . Simply by adopting these traits you can quickly move from being seen as simply a good IT Leader to being seen as a high potential IT Leader.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: Would you be willing to make sacrifices in your personal life in order to be seen as a high potential IT Leader?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Ok, enough of this cloud stuff already! The field of IT is just like every other field out there and we have our own share of trendy topics – cloud computing sure seems to the one that we’re dealing with right now. With all of the magazine articles on clouds and conferences going on, you’d think that every IT Leader and CEO has a good understanding of just exactly what a cloud is. Well, you’d be wrong…

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Is Your IT Leader Resume Blackberry Ready?

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Image CreditHow Will Your Resume Look When Viewed On A Blackberry?

How Will Your Resume Look When Viewed On A Blackberry?

When you go hunting for your next IT mangement job (and it may be sooner than later), will your resume be up to the job? Come to think of it, when was the last time you dusted off and updated your resume? Do you still have that quaint “objective statement” or “career goal” hanging out at the top? If so, you may be in for a shock – that’s not going to be the best use of resume real estate when it’s being reviewed on the hiring manager’s Blackberry…

The Need For A New Resume

Parting is such sweet sorrow… or so the classic line goes. Look, when did you first create your IT resume? Awhile ago? Even if it was only a couple of years ago, the world has changed dramatically since then and it’s time that you (and your resume) kept up with it. It’s time to say goodbye to your old style resume.

About that “objective statement” up at the top – ditch it. The next company that will be hiring you really doesn’t care about what you are looking for. Instead, they are facing pain right now and they are looking for someone whom they can hire to come in and make that pain go away. That’s what really matters.

This means that we’re going to have to make some changes to your current resume. Prepare to get out the sharp knife.

Length

How long is too long? How long is too short? This rule of thumb has not changed even in the 21st Century – a resume should be two pages max. In fact, it’s really only the first 25% that you can count on a hiring manager reading so that’s where you’ve got to really shine.

If you’ve had some amazing IT experiences that you think would really help your case, then feel free to include them – as an addendum. This extra stuff can be anywhere from 4-12 pages long; however, remember that there is no guarantee that anyone is going to read it.

Skills

Are you the world’s best Cobol / Fortran / Java programmer? Drop it. Look, you’re going for a IT management job and it’s really your leadership and project management skills that are going to get you the job – not your programming chops. Use your limited resume real estate to explain how your IT management skills have made your past projects successful.

Skip The History Lesson

A resume is designed to tell your next employer about how you’ll perform in the workplace. This means that pretty much anything that does not have to do with the workplace should be dropped. This list will include civic accomplishments, professional associations that you belong to, charity work, etc. Use the freed up space to provide more details about your most recent job and how it relates to the job that you are applying for.

Say No To Descriptions, Yes To Accomplishments

I must confess that this has been a mistake that I’ve made in the past and I found it hard to stop doing it. Instead of providing your work biography by listing every single job you’ve ever had, use the space instead to list your accomplishments. Ultimately this is what your future employer really cares about. Don’t worry about all of those “title only” promotions that you’ve gotten over the years, instead just focus on the projects that you’ve lead and the challenges that you’ve mastered.

What All Of This Means For You

Everyone has a resume. However, not everyone has a resume that will work for them. In this day and age of everyone having too much to do and too little time to do it in, you’re going to need to shape your resume to be scanned quickly on your future boss’ Blackberry as he/she dashes off to their next meeting.

What this means is that you’re going to have to cut to the bone and get rid of everything that doesn’t pertain to how you would do in your next position. Detailing what you’ve accomplished in your most recent IT management positions is what that Blackberry scanning hiring manager is going to be looking for.

Take the time to craft a new resume that is tailored to read quickly in digital form and you’ll be one step ahead of everyone else who is applying for the same job. If you make it easy for them to see why you are the perfect fit for the job, then you’ve just shown them why you’re the IT Leader that they need to hire…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Knowledge

Question For You: If a hiring manager is only going to scan the first half of the first page of your resume, what do you think that you need to put there in order to land the job?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

“Think outside of the box” is what IT Leaders seem to be hearing more and more every day. Well that’s great advice, but how do you actually go about doing it?

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How IT Leaders Build A Mentor Network For Their Career

Thursday, October 1st, 2009
IT Leaders Need Mentors To Be Successful (c) - 2008

IT Leaders Need Mentors To Be Successful (c) - 2008

I’ve got a quick question for you: what is the next step in your career? What do you want to get promoted to? In fact, as long as we are talking about that, what comes after THAT promotion? If you want to become a real IT Leader, then the career ladder generally goes: IT worker, manager, director, executive director, CIO. Got a plan on how you are going to get to that next step?

The Problem With Career Mentors

It used to be that what you needed in order to climb out of an IT postition was a mentor - someone who would take you under their wing and guide you during your career. Bad news – those days are long gone.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the old way, it’s just that the world started to move faster. Nowadays nobody stays in a given position long enough to act as a mentor to you for any reasonable length of time. Even if they did, they are probably too busy to spend enough time with you keeping your career on track.

The old way of picking a mentor and having them work with you over time to shape and guide your career is gone – things move too fast and change too often to allow this to work any more. Instead, you need to discover how to create networks of mentors that they can use to provide the career guidance that you will need over the years.

If you thought the old way was tough, just wait until you try to figure out how to do things using the new way!

The New Way Of Managing Your Career

Dr. Dawn Chandler (CA Polytech State University), Dr. Douglas Hall (Boston University) and Dr. Kathy Kram (Boston University) have spent some time looking into this problem with the modern workplace and they’ve got some ideas about how we can fix things.

Since there is really no way for you to get a single individual to agree to act as your mentor for the 40-45 years that your IT career is going to last, instead you are going to have take a different approach. You are going to have to create a network of mentors that you can use to accomplish what you need to get done.

Oh, there is one small problem with this clever solution: most of us are not all that good at creating a mentor network like this let alone trying to maintain it. It looks like you are going to need some suggestions on how best to do this.

Building And Maintaining A Mentor Network

One of the first things that you are going to have to realize about building your mentor network is that the people that you are going to ask to be a part of your network will not all be the same. This means that you are going to have develop a special set of skills in order to be able to (1) find them, and (2) create relationships with them that will make them want to mentor you.

Here is what you are going to have to do in order to create a mentoring network that will help your IT career move to the next level:

  • Talk, Talk,Talk - you are going to have to be willing to take the initiative and reach out to those people that you want to be a part of your mentoring network – they aren’t going to contact you. Once you’ve contacted them the first time, then you are going to have to work at maintaining contact with them so that they don’t forget about you.
  • Be Sensitive – Not everyone that you talk to is going to want to be your mentor. It’s going to be up to you to take the time to pick up on the message that they are sending your way. Few people will actually come out and say “no”, so it’s up to you to detect those folks who would like to decline the opportunity.
  • It’s The Takeoff That Counts – when you’ve found someone who is willing to be a member of your mentor network, then you’ve got to be willing to make an extra effort to make sure that your initial interactions with that person go very well. They will set tone for the rest of your relationship. Show up early for meetings, follow up quickly on actions, and pay attention when they are talking.
  • Be Prepared – make sure that you get ready for every meeting with someone who is in your mentor network. Research what you want to ask them, make sure that you can show that you are making progress in your career, and come prepared to ask questions about challenges that you are currently facing.
  • Information Is The Key – you need to be willing to share information with your mentoring network. This does not mean that you have to tell them all the details about what you had for breakfast today, but rather that you be willing to lay out your current challenges and failures that you’ve had – you know, stuff that can be hard to talk about.
  • It’s A Two-Way Street – if someone agrees to be a part of your mentoring network, then you have agreed to do your best to help them out also. This means that you have a responsibility to help your mentors out whenever you have an opportunity to do so. This can be as simple as passing on information that you run across to actually doing work for them.
  • Be A Nice Person – Nobody want to work with a jerk and they certainly don’t want to mentor one. No matter what kind of day you’ve had, always be on your best behavior when you interact with a member of your mentor network.
  • Be Positive – how you choose to view the world is a key part of how others see you. If you have a positive attitude you will naturally attract people to your mentor network and you’ll be able to keep them there. If you’ve got a negative attitude, then nobody is going to want to lend you a helping hand.

Final Thoughts

As a member of an IT department, you are undoubtedly busy. However, it turns out that you have yet another job on top of your “day job” – managing your career. You can’t do this by yourself and so you’re going to need to have someone guide you – a mentor network.

Creating and maintaining a mentor network is no easy task. However, if you go about doing it in the right way it can become a powerful force that will cause your career to shoot ahead and make sure that you don’t get left behind.

Take the time to build and maintain a good network of mentors who will be willing to work with you and you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Too little time, too much to do. Does that adequately describe your IT leader job? I don’t know about you, but often is the time that I’ve looked with envy at my peers who are great multitaskers and wished that I could be more like them. It turns out that I was wishing for the wrong thing – multitaskers actually do a lousy job at just about everything.

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Grow Your Career – What IT Leaders Need To Do

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

IT Leaders Are Responsible For Growing Their Career - But Not Like This!

IT Leaders Are Responsible For Growing Their Career - But Not Like This!

As though the job of being a IT Leader was not hard enough, there’s also that added responsibility that you have to manage your career. With all of the turmoil of the past couple of years, it’s now more important than ever for IT Leaders to find the time to tend to this task.

Growing Your Career – It’s Like Another Job

The #1 thing that IT Leaders need to realize is that it is no longer good enough to sit passively by and hope that your career will take you to someplace that you want to be. Instead, you need to take charge of it. Yes, this means that there is more work for you to do. However, you will benefit from all of the time and effort that you put into this task.

It’s Networking Time

For some odd reason too many of us shun what is probably the most effective career management activity – networking. Study after study has shown that most high paying professional jobs are found through networking. What this means for you is that you need to always be growing your network.

This might cause you to rush out and try to build the largest LinkedIn network that you possibly can. Don’t do it. Deborah Bailey who is a career and employment coach, points out that the quality of the members of your professional network is far more important than quantity of people that you have in the network.

Get Uncomfortable

We all chose to have a career in IT for a bunch of reasons. One of these was because we knew that IT was a dynamic field – it’s always changing. What this means for you is that you can’t sit back and assume that the skills that you have today (both hard and soft skills) will be what anyone will be looking for tomorrow.

Instead, you need to get up off your butt and go out and learn something new. This ability to be constantly seeking out new things to learn will be what keeps your skills fresh and makes sure that you are always employable.

Big Picture Stuff

This might be the trickiest part of the program – learning to keep your eyes open. It’s all too easy to focus on what’s going on inside of your company or even within your industry. However, the key to long-term career success is to stay on top of what’s going on in the big world and understand how it may impact your company and your career.

Final Thoughts

You have no control over what others may do to your career in the future. However, you have complete control over what you do to prepare your career for the future. You are going to need to be proactive (start doing something TODAY) and you are going to have to be willing to adapt to the changes that we all know will happen in the IT field. If you can do both of these things, then you will have truly taken control of your career and you’ll be well on you way as you transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

In the past have you actively managed your career or have you just sorta let things happen to you? How much have you increased your professional network by during this year? How did you do it? What new skills have you learned this year? What other industries do you track? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could go to work for any company out there right now, which one would it be? A lot of us would say Google – everything that we’ve read and heard about the company makes it seem like a great place to work. However, it turns out that even Google is not immune to IT staff problems…

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Your Mother Was Right: How IT Leaders Dress For Success

Thursday, June 18th, 2009
IT Leaders Need To Dress For Success

IT Leaders Need To Dress For Success

So if you could wear anything that you wanted to work, what would it be? Would you be showing up in shorts and flip-flops? How about jeans and a T-shirt? Well why don’t you? The answer to this question is something that we normally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, but because it can have a big impact on our careers, perhaps we should…

What, Me Worry?

The first issue that we need to tackle is trying to figure out why is there an issue in the first place. Face it, although we’ve always been told not to judge someone by the clothes that they wear, we all do it anyway.

That’s why how you go about dressing can determine how the people that you interact with perceive you while you are at work. Additionally, it can have a big impact in how you feel about your self. I almost hate to say it, but it’s true, how you dress can have an effect on your ability to get a job in the first place.

That Professional Look – For Women

I’ve done some asking around and when I opened my mouth, I got dumped on. There are too few women working in IT and this is clearly an emotionally charged topic for many of them. I listened to everyone (for quite some time if I do say so myself), and here are the top four suggestions that were brought up over and over again:

  1. Hose Rule: It turns out that pantyhose (remember them?) are still important. In today’s workplace, bare legs send the wrong message – they aren’t considered to be professional. Even if they are not required, they are required.
  2. Shoe Time: This one sorta lost me because I just don’t pay enough attention to shoes. However, smarter people than I told me that regular sandals and even open-toed shoes are generally considered to be acceptable for the workplace. However, the ultra comfortable flip-flops and toe-post sandals (what are those?) are not.
  3. Tall Patterns: Those women who are tall have a bit of a challenge especially if they work with / for shorter men – their height can make them appear overpowering. The goal here is to not emphasize what you already have – height. Instead, go with a horizontal pattern.
  4. Short Patterns: The goal here is to attempt to buy yourself some height so that you don’t have to kill yourself wearing 4″ heels all the time. The suggestion is that wearing a cropped jacket can help make your legs appear longer.

That Professional Look – For Men

Ok, so we’ve pointed out what women need to do to make the clothes that they wear to the office work for them, not against them. Now let’s see if we can do the same for men:

  1. Watch The Boss: One of the most important things that you can do is to watch what the boss wears and match him. This is especially important on so-called “casual days”.
  2. Super Dressy (Sorta): Things have changed. The #1 dressy look in the office these days is wearing a suit, but with no tie.
  3. Sports: You can’t go wrong if you wear a sport coat. The experts recommend that you go with either earth or gray tones in order to make matching with shirts easier.
  4. Pants: There always seems to be too many choices here. Stick with medium to dark worsted wool and  you can’t go wrong.

Final Thoughts

Mom was right after all – clothes do make the man / woman. Dressing well sends a message to others that says “if I care enough to take the time to dress this way, just imagine how much time I’ll take to solve your problems.” Now that’s the right message to be sending as you transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader!

Questions For You

How much time do you spend on average each day deciding what you will wear that day? Have you ever worn something to the office that you regretted? Have you ever mis-read a boss and not dressed appropriately? Do you feel that you boss dresses appropriately? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As though the job of being a IT Leader was not hard enough, there’s also that added responsibility that you have to manage your career. With all of the turmoil of the past couple of years, it’s now more important than ever for IT Leaders to find the time to tend to this task…

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Posted in career | 2 Comments »

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