compassNote: the Seven Key Questions for Ambitious, Aspiring Leaders, are presented in the book, Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.  I’ll explore each question here at Building Better Leaders through individual “Leadership Tip of the Day” posts, offering ideas for investigation and discussion.

The prior questions challenged you to ask and answer, “Why do you want to lead?”  and “Do You Understand the Role of a Leader?” The third question focuses on the issue of skill sets.  For too many early career leaders, it comes as a shock that the skills that brought them to the dance are not the skills that will help them win the contest.

Question number 3. Do you understand that the skills that make you successful as an individual contributor are not the  skills you need to succeed as a leader?

I’ve noticed that new leaders on technical teams (software development, engineering, IT), often struggle with this issue. In part, the dilemma is created when senior leaders promote the best technicians into leadership roles, and then fail to provide the proper mentoring for the new role. This freshly minted leader is used to surviving and prospering on their technical prowess, and without proper context for their new priorities, they emphasize the technical topics over the issues of motivating, leading and guiding others.

One senior manager observing this repeated pattern, offered, “give a technical professional a choice between a technical or a people issue, and I guarantee which way they will go.”

While technical competence is important in many roles, the demands of leadership require that you shift your focus to priorities that emphasize forging an effective working environment and facilitating the development, coaching and achievement of others.  Your job is to help create other technically adept team members, and to use your skills as a tool to cross-check on key decisions and encourage broader and bigger thinking.

Your value as an expert is now worth less than your value as someone that is responsible for creating experts. It’s critical that you focus on internalizing your new role and shift your focus to the people and teams in your environment.