We also must identify people who have empathy for others. In the past, managers felt the need to divide their employees’ personal and business lives. That doesn’t work in this day and age. Our managers must learn that effectiveness on the job is always defined by the severity of personal issues. Managers must learn that to disregard these issues will significantly, if not conclusively, affect an individual’s performance.
Daily impact
Informal training and inquiry can be just as impactful. Managers should be talking to their senior subordinates about their team, asking them about their development plan, as well as their opinions about the team’s strengths and weaknesses. They should be asking who their subordinates view to be the stars and who has productivity issues and what are the reasons for both. Is it personal or professional? What are you doing to help? These are conversations that should be had but oftentimes are not. This is how we can determine whether an individual has the stretch to move away from the technology and move to the people side.
Other discussions around strategy can also be fruitful. How will this system you are working on help the company? How do you think the company is doing? Are we working on the right projects? Are there systems we should be working on? What do you think of the competitors? Asking questions like these is important because, if someone is interested in the management side of the business, they should be interested in the business itself. Talk about other issues affecting the company or the industry. Ask their opinion on ways to solve the problem. The ability to analyze a problem and devise a solution is a real management skill.
Personally, I always tried to be brutally honest with my subordinates. IT people are some of the smartest people around. They can detect spin from a mile away. I always let the truth guide my decisions. If I could not tell the real story, then my decision was faulty. There is no room for politics when deciding what to do. I would also talk about the fact that there are three kinds of people in the world: Those that make it happen, those that watch it happen, and those who look around and say “What happened?” We wanted to be a department that made things happen.
A bridge to the future
Any IT department should be developing a short list of people capable of making the shift to management and all departmental managers should be aware of the list. This list should be continually updated, and it should be constantly considered for ongoing opportunities. The people on the list should be given opportunities to make presentations before management, go to special industry sessions to either represent the company as a speaker or just to learn new industrywide ideas. These new ideas should be presented to the department and even to upper management.
By looking at management development as a primary job for existing management, we put this subject in its proper place — the future of the department and maybe even the company, as IT becomes even more critical in this highly competitive environment.
