Posts Tagged ‘skills’

« Older Entries

5 Characteristics That All IT Leaders Have

Thursday, May 26th, 2011
Image Credit IT Leaders Need To Have These 5 Skills

IT Leaders Need To Have These 5 Skills

Anyone can be placed in an IT leadership position; however, what kind of skills does it take to do a good job of being an IT leader? There are a lot of IT managers out there who would like to know the answer to that question. If you are one of them, then I’ve got good news for you – I know what you need and I’m ready to tell you…

The Big Three Traits That You’ll Need

The first of the “must have” traits of effective IT leaders is one that might not come to your mind right off the bat if you were asked to list the most important traits: caring. What this means is that as an IT leader you need to be empathetic with your team: you must feel what they feel.

That’s a big one, but the next trait of an effective IT leader is even more difficult for many of us. As technical professionals we all like it when things are black & white, cut & dried. It turns out that to be an effective IT leader, you are going to have to become comfortable with ambiguity – not having all of the facts that you need and yet still being able to make decisions.

When faced with all of the challenges that you know will be coming your way, you may feel like giving up. However, if you do you won’t be a true IT leader. This is because one of the key traits of an effective IT leader is that they have persistence – they just don’t give up.

Two More For Good Measure

Think that that’s all that you need in order to be a great IT leader? Think again. It turns out that there are two more critical traits that IT leaders have.

The ability to communicate clearly is one of them. If you have the best ideas in the world, it’s not going to do anybody any good if you can’t clearly let others know what you are thinking and what you want them to do.

Finally, being an effective IT leader can only be accomplished by having the resources that you are going to need in order to accomplish your job. This means that you are going to have to become an effective negotiator. You won’t be handed everything that you need. Instead, you are going to have to be able to go out there and successfully negotiate to get it.

What All Of This Means For You

True IT leaders are made not born. This means that you can become an effective IT leader, you just need to know what skills you’ll have to have.

It turns out that there are 5 key skills that every effective IT leader has. These skills are: being caring, being comfortable with ambiguity, being persistent, being a good communicator, and being an effective negotiator.

All 5 of these skills can be learned. I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy, but you can do it. What I can promise you is that the results will be well worth the time and effort that you put into developing these skills.

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

Question For You: Which of the 5 IT leadership skills (caring, ambiguity, persistence, communications, negotiating) do you think is the most important?

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

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

One of the biggest challenges that modern IT leaders face is how to do a good job of managing their IT team. The burden of making the right technology decisions, managing budgets, and meeting the needs of the rest of the company is challenging enough, but what can make or break a manager is how good of a job you do nurturing and growing your staff. The folks at Google have the same issues and they’ve harnessed their immense computing power to come up with a solution…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in leadership | 6 Comments »

You Need To Love Yourself In Order To Have A Great IT Manager Career

Thursday, April 21st, 2011
Image Credit
To Be Successful, IT Managers Need To Know Themselves…

To Be Successful, IT Managers Need To Know Themselves…

Once you become an IT manager, you’d think that you’d pretty much made it – what more could you want? However, it’s really just the start of another journey, not the end. What makes this part of your career potentially different from the parts that came before is that you are the one who is in charge of it. How do you want things to turn out?

First Figure Out What You Want To Do

In order to be a successful IT manager, you need to be doing what you love. I know that this may sound fairly strange to most of you, perhaps just a bit too “huggy – feely”, but it turns out that it is true. In the world of IT, all too often we end up doing what we’ve fallen into and over time that can lead to burn-out and discontent with our lot in life.

A much better way of doing things is to take control of your career. This statement sounds bold, but saying it is not enough — it’s going to require you to take action. Specifically, you are going to have to ask yourself some tough questions and you’re going to have to be strong enough to take action once you discover what the answers are.

In the world of business, what interests you the most? Based on the work that you’ve done so far in your career, what did you value the most? Do you know what you are really good at?

As an IT manager, you want to take the time to fully understand what you are looking for in the rest of your IT career. This means taking the time to understand exactly what kind of work you like to do. Not every company is the same, that’s why you also have to spend time studying exactly what kind of work environments most appeal to you. Finally, what types of people do you like to work with?

Get Input From Outsiders

A great deal of the information about yourself that you are going to need in order to answer the questions that you are asking won’t come from you. The reason for this is fairly simple: we’re too close to the subject (us!) .

Because of this, we’re going to need extra help. We have three sets of people that we can reach out to: people that you work with, friends & family, and yourself.

What you are going to want to do is to collect information that will build on your understanding of yourself. Specifically, you’re looking for information on what others think that your value, work interests, and skills are. This is going to require you to reach out to everyone around you and ask them some pointed questions.

Once you’ve collected your inputs, sit down and review what you’ve been told. No one answer should dominate your thinking. Rather, you should be looking for themes that you hear from multiple people. These are going to be the clues that you are going to need in order to better understand how you should be shaping your career going forward.

What All Of This Means For You

If you really want to have an IT manager career that you will be satisfied with, then you are going to have to take charge of managing it. Your career won’t just develop on its own – you are going to have to guide it.

This means that you’re going to have to sit down and ask yourself some hard questions. You need to find out both what you enjoy doing and what you really don’t like to do. Additionally, you are going to have to ask your family, friends, and coworkers how you are perceived by others. Find out what others think your true talents (and faults) are.

Once you’ve collected this information, you’ll be well set to start to map out the kind of IT career that you really want. Ultimately you are the one who will be responsible for how it all turns out. Make sure that you take charge of your career right now!

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

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. It’s your career, make the most of it. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Question For You: Do you think that creating a formal career plan would help you to stay focused and stay on track?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Congratulations, you are finally an IT manager. Does that mean that you are also an IT leader? Turns out that the answer to that question is no. So what’s the difference? Employees do what a manager tells them to do because they have to. Employees do what a leader tells them to do because they want to. Clearly we all need to find out what we need to do in order to become leaders…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in career | No Comments »

IT Manager Training Workshop Now Available For You!

Monday, January 17th, 2011
An IT Manager Training Workshop Is Not Available

An IT Manager Training Workshop Is Not Available

Blue Elephant Consulting is pleased to announce a new training partnership with OakTree Software. The two firms have teamed up to offer a two-day workshop for IT managers. For the first time, management training that was previously only available to Fortune 100 companies will now be made available to any manager or supervisor who needs it.

OakTree Software is a full-service Information Technology Company providing staffing, training, consulting, and network services to clients around the United States since 1995. OakTree is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.

For the first time, an IT manager workshop called “Secrets Of Becoming An IT Leader Who Can Deliver Real Results” will be offered to the general public. Dr. Jim Anderson will be the instructor and the course will be presented at OakTree’s training facilities in Tulsa on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 1-2, 2011.

To register for this course, click here!

Here’s a description of the course:

Are you a new IT supervisor? Maybe you are a seasoned IT leader. While anyone can be a manager, it takes special skills to become a true IT Leader. Making the transition from an individual technical contributor to managing a team of technical professionals is never easy, and in today’s mixed up global economy it’s become even harder.

OakTree Software has teamed with the industry’s premier IT management skills consultant Dr. Jim Anderson, ”The Business Side of IT Expert,” to present a leadership workshop that has been tailored to meet the unique needs of IT managers and supervisors. Unlike any other management workshop, this is the one that will provide you with the real-world skills that you’re going to need to be successful in 2011 and beyond.

Building on the technical skills that you already have, this two-day workshop will provide you with both the foundational skills and the advanced techniques that you are going to need in order to be successful in an ever-changing world. Forget dry classroom lectures and get ready for the core knowledge, real world examples, and hands on role playing that will bring the skills that you need alive and make it easy to remember everything that is covered.

In order to ensure that you’ll get the opportunity to closely interact with Dr. Anderson and get all of your questions answered, we’re deliberately limiting the number of students that we’ll accept into this class. You can sign up for either one day (Fundamentals Skills) or at a discounted price two days (fundamental skills and Maximum Management Skills).

To register for this course, click here!

Day 1 — Fundamental Skills That Every Technical Manager Needs

    1. Setting Goals That Your Team Will Be Motivated To Achieve
    2. How To Hire The Best Employees (And How To Avoid Making Mistakes)
    3. Keeping The Team That You Have By Making The Grass Greener Here
    4. You Can’t Do It All — Delegate With Confidence
    5. 120 Hours Is Never Enough: How To Manage Your Time In Order To Be Successful
    6. It Takes A Team To Make You Successful
    7. How A Manager Becomes A Coach
    8. Problem Employees: What To Do With Your Bad Apples

Day 2 — Maximum Management: Skills That Produce Superior Managers and Teams

    1. Will You Be Ready When A Crises Hits?
    2. Move Your Career Forward By Moving Your Team Member’s Careers Forward
    3. The Difference Between Management & Leadership
    4. What You Need To Know About Setting & Executing A Strategy
    5. Budgeting: Follow The Numbers
    6. What Your Company’s Financial Statements Are Trying To Tell You
    7. Accounting 101: Using Net Present Value And Internal Rate Of Return To Make Decisions
    8. Follow The Money: How to Use The Breakeven Analysis And Operating Leverage Planning Tools

This is a great investment to make sure 2011 is your best year ever!

Course Prices: Discounted price for Day 1 & Day 2 – $1,450, Day 1 only – $800

To register for this course, click here!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in IT manager | No Comments »

Are You Cut Out To Be An IT Leader?

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

There Are 5 Skills That You Need To Be A Product Manager

There Are 5 Skills That You Need To Be An IT Leader

Jeff Vance over at Sandstorm Media talked with me to get some inputs for an article that he was writing for the Project Manager Planet site. Yeah, yeah – I know that we’re IT Leaders not Project Managers. However, Jeff did a very good job of capturing a lot of what makes our job so hard to do.

Check out his article which is called 5 Signs You’re Not Cut Out to be a Project Manager. Give it a read and every time you see “Project Manager” just mentally replace it with “IT Leader” and it’ll work out for you.

Jeff has included the classic story of Charles Pellerin, NASA’s director of Astrophysics for the Hubble space telescope program which should serve as a good reminder for all IT Leaders that you should never give up trying to make something better…

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So what do IT Leaders actually do? Generally I’d agree with you if you answered something like “create IT solutions“; however, I’ve been giving this some thought and I think that we’re missing the mark if that’s our answer…

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in IT manager | 1 Comment »

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…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in career | No Comments »

« Older Entries