Have you ever found yourself wanting to make a major shift – in skills, in roles, in relationships? One of my good friends, Jimmy May (Blog | Twitter), accomplished a set of major career and lifestyle revisions including relocating to Redmond, taking on a huge new level of job responsibility as part of the Microsoft SQL Customer Advisory Team, and achieving the noted accreditation of Microsoft Certified Master.
Jimmy and I were chatting about undertaking major life changes like these and, as is often the case, his thoughts were too good not to share. Be sure to explore these excellent career development resources. So here were some great pointers from Jimmy:
Let me know what other resources you enjoy for professional and career development!
And if you’re really interested in developing your IT leadership and management skills, I encourage you to attend my Leadership Skills for IT Professionals seminar. I’m presenting this full-day seminar in Dallas at the SQLRally on May 8, and in Louisville at SQL Saturday 122 on June 19. Hope to see you there!
I hate to admit it, but I’m a hoarder. Yes, like those insane people on the A&E TV show. Only my hoarding is all virtual. For example, take the image above. That’s just a tiny part of my Google Reader home page. That’s a tiny part of my Google Reader home page AFTER reading most of the day on a recent Sunday. I still had thousands of entries to go after hours of reading. On top of that, I subscribe to some technical e-newsletters. I’m a member of quite a few LinkedIn discussion groups, each of which produce daily and weekly newsletters. (I only subscribe to the weekly versions). Then there’s Twitter too. In all, there are THOUSANDS of interesting floating through the ether which I’d been trying to collect and, occassionally, read. Bah humbug!
The Downside of an Information Hoard
You might think that, as an IT professional, hoarding information is good for you. After all, the more you know, the more effective you are at your job, right? Uh – no. I’ve discovered a few downsides to keeping all of this information around. First, I lose time on administrivia, uh, I mean administration. I can’t think of a time when a search on Google has not produced the information that I’m interested in. So by spending time keeping up with my blog feeds, adding new blog feeds, deleting old ones, and so on, I lose time administrating something that really doesn’t need to be administrated.
Second, there’s the time it takes to read all of these entries – many long hours to read thousands of entries per month. I’ve actually figured out a little trick to make this go a lot faster. What’s that trick? Well, previously, I used to start reading my entries and then clicking “Next Entry” each time. Even when I skipped a lot of entries, just slogging through them all was a big time drain. Now, I simply select large swathes of entries that I’m not interested in and click “Mark as Read” without ever opening them. Works great! I’ve also gotten a lot more aggressive about dropping bloggers and RSS feeds that offer low value. A lot of bloggers have popped up who only recount things which are available in Books On-Line. Why spend any time on that at all? I’m looking for strong insight, experiences, and analysis – not simple technology facts. (A follow on thought to this tip is that “Bloggers Should Write Meaningful Article Titles!”)
Third, and more importantly, information hoarding takes a big emotional toll on me. Maybe it’s a factor of just how my brain works and is completely inapplicable to you. But in my case, I always carry a subtle nagging feeling when I have unread entries in my various accounts. Even when I know that these entries are optional and that it’s not necessary for me to read any of these things, I still feel like I should read them. Basically, it makes me feel like I should be working all the dang time and that makes me feel anxious. Anxiety makes me less productive and more prone to burn-out. And anxiety bleeds through my work hours into my home life. It makes it hard to enjoy a movie with the kids or some gardening in the yard. All because there’s that feeling that I haven’t gotten the hoard processed yet.
The Solution to the Information Hoard
I mentioned a couple specific techniques for thinning out the hoard in paragraph two. To summarize, first, subscribe to only those bloggers, feeds, and newsletters which add actual understanding to your life. Second, open and read only those entries that matter and skip the rest. Those are techniques for dealing with lots of entries to read. But my last problem, the anxiety issue, was a little bit harder to solve.
Like a lot of internal ways of handling life’s problem, the answer is simple but not easy. Similar life problems with simple but difficult solutions might include feelings of guilt (the solution is confession) or anger (the solution is forgiveness, either of yourself or for the other party). So what’s the solution to anxiety? Here’s my thought process – the answer to my information hoard is about values. What do I mean? I value these various things because they make me better at my job. Losing things of value causes me some anxiety. My anxiety has its roots in the feeling that I’m letting things of values (these various blog entries) slip through my hands. Why would you ignore things of value, or even worse, get rid of them?!? On the other hand, if you asked me what I really and truly valued most in this world, I’d answer with “my family and loved ones”. But again, do I actually demonstrate this priority with my time? Not nearly enough. Therefore, the answer is to properly appraise the value of my time. When I think about it rationally, I think that this sort of reading is worth about 30 minutes per day, maybe a full 60 minutes when there’s something really important to learn or someone really significant to listen to.
That’s it. After 30 minutes, I can walk away from any sort of reading guilt-free. So what’s my new solution to the information hoard and the anxieties that it’s been producing? A quick check on the writers and topics I care about the most and then “MARK ALL AS READ”. Yes, there will be more to read tomorrow. But now I no longer carry an ever increasing load saying to myself “Someday I’ll get to that”. I feel better already.
Feedback Requested
What’s your strategy to dealing with your information hoard? Are you still keeping everything you ever produced or read digitally? Does my approach sound reasonable and workable to you? Or am I off base?
I’ve always appreciated how Andy Warren (blog| twitter) operates in the most transparent manner, especially as it relates to his role as a director for the Professional Association for SQL Server. For example, Andy’s latest blog post about prepping for the SQLRally, to kick off in less than 30 days, is insightful and gives you a good idea of the sort of work a strong director for PASS needs to put in. I also enjoy how Andy more or less thinks out loud and offers you the chance to provide your input. In that latest blog post, he was mulling different after hours entertainment options, giving you a chance to pipe up with your opinion if you had one.
Learn from My Mistakes
Times running out for the early registration discount. Save $50 by registering before the end of the week! And while you’re at it, register for my full day, pre-conference seminar on learning leadership and management skills especially tailored for the IT professional. Here’s a quick run-down of the topics we’ll cover in my pre-con:
Earning the respect of your team
A deep understand of effectively motivating technology professionals
Specific skills to lead database professionals competently that broadly fall into the categories of:
Coaching team members to effectively meet goals and deadlines
Facilitating change and navigating organizational disruptions
Promoting communication within the team and with management
Keeping teams and projects on task and within scope
Dealing with difficult team members
Practicing good team time management techniques
Read all about the goals of the session here. If you’re coming to my session, I’d love to hear your thoughts ahead of time about challenges you’re facing!
Personal Experience, Personnel Experience
Also, just a word about my bona fides. I’ve had a lot of leadership and management training over the years, but like many professionals I consider my on-the-job experiences to be the most valuable.
On the education side of the equation, I received a bachelor’s degree in the school of management back in the 1980′s. I’ve also gone through the Center for Creative Leadership‘s leadership training curriculum, the Blessing and White Management Training curriculum, and SmithBucklin’s not-for-profit governance and organizational strategy training curriculum. On the experience side of the equation, I led small dev and admin teams of 3-7 people starting way back in the early 1990′s. In the late 1990′s, I started taking a more strategic direction with my skills as the manager of information architecture at the firm where I worked as well as taking a role as one of the founding directors of PASS. In the early 2000′s, I joined Quest Software as our initial SQL Server product architect and spent several years leading the team to a over 50 individuals in a half dozen teams in as many disparate locations around the world.
A Few Words About Community from SQLBits8
The more I go, the more reasons I find to go back to the SQLBits conferences held around the UK. The starting image isn’t very flattering, but here’s a fun little interview put together by Andrew Fryer of Microsoft:
The 2011 PASS SQLRally is just about one month away and it’s high time I highlighted some of the important things you’ll be hearing about in my precon seminar Leadership and Team Management Skills for the IT Professional. Just to set the context, many of us IT people got to our lofty career positions because of our keen use of technology. It takes a lot of smarts to get where we’ve gotten, but they are a very specific set of smarts that can’t always be used in every business setting. And, since so many of us have topped out in our potential salary as long as we stay in the trenches and the only do technology work, a lot of us are starting to eye those middle manager positions so that we can continue to see our career grow. The only problem is that all of those skills that enabled us to become top tier technologists don’t transfer into the management arena.
I’ll be teaching a wide variety of soft skills and specific management checklists to help you survive those early transitional days. And if you’re not a manager? You’ll still want to attend because the wide variety of communication skills we’ll cover will help you stay on top of many other real life situations, from leading the local Girl Scout troop to taking a role on the local PTA organization.
You can read the full and pedantic session description at the link I provided up above. But here’s a list of Five Funny Things You’ll Hear in the Precon:
“Here’s where we get out the whips and chains…”
“In this section, we’re going to learn how to manage our managers…”
“And then I was, like, OMG. And she was, like, LOL. And her cousin was, like, ROFL. But then I was, like, meh…”
“Darth Vader would be proud…”
“The beatings will continue until morale improves!”
And one bonus:
“That’s what she said…”
Did I put these in context, heck no! But it’s a fun session, with some practice labs and LOTS of content to help you make that transition from full time technologist to part- or even full-time leader!
Attrition has taken its toll once again as a few good friends move from being colleagues to being former colleagues.
As a result of the folks moving on to bigger and better things, I’m now stepping up in to the roll of editor-in-chief of SQLServerPedia. This roll is mostly about checking on the quality of content produced by our syndicating bloggers to make sure that they’re not trying to sell products or services and that their posts are of high quality. That’s about where the official duties end, save for things like acting as a judge in big SSP contests.
One new aspect that I want to bring to the roll is that of a newsletter. At first, it seemed like it be great to simply point out our most popular blog posts once per month or per fortnight. Our most popular blog posts are quite easy to track through our off-the-shelf analytic tools, after all. However, I want to bring more to it than just a recap.
Here are some ideas I was considering and for which I’d like your feedback:
I’d like to highlight a blogger in a brief interview in each newsletter. Would you be interested in reading it?
I’d like to riff on the database industry, in general, and SQL Server, specifically, depending on my mood at the time.
Get some help from you, dear reader, on a variety of crowd-sourced and community driven content much like we’ve done with the useful (and exhaustive) list of SQL Server Twitterers found HERE.
Spend more time doing either podcasts (no video) or videocasts. Would you use either? Do you have a preference?
Of course, I’ll continue to do all of my usual blogging including my Tool Time tips for SQL Server Magazine, professional development advice in the Plays Well With Others column, and thoughts on the database industry, virtualization, cloud computing, and pretty much anything else I feel like blabbing about.
Thanks for the opportunity to serve. I look forward to your feedback!
In this vblog entry on www.SQLServerPedia.com shows SQL Server expert Kevin Kline discussing his views on how to be both efficient and effective in your day to day and career – aimed at the SQL Server professional, but good for anyone.
I’m frequently asked the following paraphrased question:
I’d been happily plugging away in my job as a {DBA/Dev/Terminator/Warp Drive Engineer} for several years, when I applied for the manager position. I was surprised and thrilled when I got the job! But now that I’ve been in the job for a while, I find that no one on the team is thrilled with me. I know that I made a lot of changes. But they were all for the good of the team. What should I do to reconnect with my team and rebuild my friendships?
A common theme in this series, “Plays Well With Others”, is that the skills responsible for your success as a database professional have little in common with success as a leader and manager. And this scenario is a classic example. It’s especially important to our situation because the solution to this problem is entirely people-oriented and has nothing to do with all those great SQL Server skills you’ve developed over the years.
It's not always comedy
First of all, if you haven’t already, avail yourself of the excellent and time-tested Blanchard’s Leadership and the One Minute Manager as well as The One Minute Manager, both by Kenneth Blanchard. Management and leadership books churn through the bookstores as quickly late night talk shows on NBC have lately. But this book has proven its worth over the years and its advice still holds up well.
Next, recognize that most management hassles can be defeated or at least deflated by publicly getting in front of them. In a sense, the best way to solve this kind of problem is a bit of proactive damage control. So instead of launching into a bunch of new initiatives and changes for the team (especially the kind that reduce a former teammates’ power or privilege), announce that you’re considering a bunch of changes. You don’t have to be specific about your plans, but don’t be intentionally vague or evasive either. Further explain that some of the changes may be uncomfortable, but you’re convinced they’ll make the team much more productive and return greater value to the enterprise.
Ask everyone on the team for input and ideas of their own within the next X number of weeks while you formulate your plans. It’s very possible that you might 1) get ideas from team members that exactly matches what you’d planned to do, and 2) get new ideas you never thought of but would like to add to the mix or even put higher in priority. Be sure to thank everyone who steps up to the conversation (or email thread).
Now, it’s time to book some one-on-one time across the team and have the “tough talks” well in advance and in private with those who might be on the losing end of your changes. Also, invite suggestions about how to best go forward. You might be surprised by their team spirit. By treating everyone with empathy and dignity, you might turn one of these potential grumblers into a reliable “wingman”. On the other hand, arguments are quite likely so explain that the changes are non-negotiable, but reiterate their contribution and value to the team.
By handling this situation with foresight, you send several messages. The first and strongest message is that you are the leader. This might not be comfortable for your friends or even to you. But it’s extremely important to establish this role early on. And by handling the situation with dignity, you demonstrate that you have credibility, which makes strengthens you in a sort of positive-feedback loop.
If it’s too late to establish your “street cred” and you’ve already fumbled the early stages of the transition to leadership, you can still recover. But as the old saying goes, an ounce of protection is worth a pound of prevention. Usually in a situation like this, you should implement a goal-setting and planning session with the entire team. Explain that the objective is to collaboratively define the goals and objectives of the team and to adjust team responsibilities, processes, and duties to best accomplish those goals. Personally, you should remember the purpose of the meeting is, primarily, to get everyone on the team knows buy-in to your vision of “success” for the team and, secondarily, firmly establish your position as leader. It might take as much as half a day to hammer this down.
Prepare ahead of time. Make sure that your changes mesh with management’s goals for your team. Ensure that you and YOUR boss are on the same page about what characteristics would mark a team as “successful”. If you have some extremely strong willed team members or are expecting outright conflict, you may need to conduct your goal-setting session as a one-on-one series of meetings rather than a single meeting for the entire team. Schedule a conference room (with a white board) and appoint an official scribe to record the details of the meeting. Encourage a lot of brainstorming during the meeting. Make sure to discuss these topics:
What are we here for? A comprehensive list of team goals that characterize the team as “successful”. Be sure to project top management’s view of success to the team since you might be the only one who fully understands what management expects, plus you can contradict any false notions held by team members.
What do we do daily? The bulk of daily duties and processes performed by the team (before your changes) put in place to try to meet the goals in topic 1.
What could we do better? List any changes you put in place, as well as solicit ideas from the team. Accommodate good ideas from the team, but not at the expense of meeting the enterprise goals. Explain to the team that the goals of topic 1, as well as duties and processes of topic 2, are a sort of “contract” with the enterprise. These are the things that the enterprise uses to evaluate whether you’re all successful or not.
What did we decide? Explain that, as the leader, you’re interested in maximizing the contribution of the entire team. This might mean that the best solutions for the team are not always what each individual prefers. Reinforce that everyone on the team has part-ownership in the team contract. Express confidence in the team that they can make the changes especially effect and thank each one for their contribution and efforts.
At the conclusion of the meeting, you should now have buy-in from everyone on the team and a strong consensus on expectations. Going forward, you can use the “contract” agreed to by you and your team as the basis for evaluating performance and, if needed, for correcting underperformance.
So, after all of that, does that mean you’re still the buddy of the guy in the cube next to you? Chances are good that you and your cube-mates can stay buddies, if that’s your main goal. Just be mindful that most peer-to-peer relationships do change when one of the peers is promoted to be the boss of the other. However, you can avoid these relationship issues by clearly and explicitly defining everyone’s role and then getting explicit, verbal (or written) confirmation that you and your workmates are in agreement.
Last week, I talked about one of the worst type of management scenarios to work under – the micromanager. Now, let’s take that conversation from the “Dark Side” into the light to talk about great leaders.
To say that Dr. William Cohen knows a few things about leadership is approximately the same as saying that Moby Dick was a fish. Not only was Cohen a former Air Force major general, university president, and business leader, but he has many degrees (including a PhD) and even holds several engineering patents. One of the many books authored by Dr. Cohen is the 1998 Best Business Book of the Year, The Stuff of Heroes, also considered by many to be one of the ten best leadership books of all times.
If you’ve ever had a desire to lead, I recommend reading this book. But even if you never read it, Dr. Cohen’s lessons are intriguing. Even a quick list, like I’m presenting here, offers a lot of practical advice. This summary can’t do Dr. Cohen’s material justice, but here are the main behaviors of extraordinary leaders, as revealed by his research:
Maintain absolute integrity.
Know your stuff.
Declare your expectations.
Show uncommon commitment.
Expect positive results.
Take care of your people.
Put duty before self.
Get out in front.
A common cliché these days is that someone is “a born leader”. The better adage is that leaders are made, not born. Consider the eight behaviors above. Which of those behaviors require innate ability and are not something that can be learned? None of them! In fact, closer inspection of the eight behaviors of excellent leaders shows pretty clearly, at least in my mind, that each behavior results from a conscious decision on the part of the leader to behave in a certain way.
In effect, great leaders are constantly mindful that they are scrutinized by the teams which they lead, are committed to those teams and the results they deliver. Whereas poor leaders spend lots of time thinking about what their teams can do for them, great leaders think about what they can do to make their teams produce better results.
We could spend more than one article on each of these eight behaviors. (And we actually can, if popular demand takes us in that direction). So take a few moments and think about both the great and the terrible leaders in your experience. Compare their behavior to Dr. Cohen’s checklist. How do they come out? I’ll bet that they are probably doing a good job of exhibiting the eight behaviors of excellent leaders. Now that you’ve thought about it – share your thoughts! Send me your emails with examples of excellent leadership in action or, sometimes even better, share your stories of leadership train crashes!
If you don’t have the opportunity to lays hands on Dr. Cohen’s book, at least look up his web site and read more there. I’d start with his recommendations for 30 Vital Actions for Leaders at http://www.stuffofheroes.com/30_vital_leadership_actions.htm and then explore from there.
And as always, your comments and thoughts are appreciated.
Imagine you’re working on a new project. It’s an important project and its success will be a big win for the organization. You were chosen for the job because of your competency, skill, and effectiveness. You get things like this done all the time and have a track record for pulling it off. Now that the project is underway, you’re finding that trust and support you need from management is absent. Instead, you’ve got a micromanaging boss, who’s put so many additional requirements on your for reporting, meetings, and whatever their favorite nit-picking happens to be that management is actually an impediment to successfully completing the project!
Bad bosses are the suck
The bad news is that this happens to all of us at some time or another. In fact, it’s so common that exit interviews show that nearly one in three professionals have changed jobs to escape micromanaging or unreasonable bosses. The good news is that you can survive and even prosper under this sort of “boss behaving badly” scenario.
The WHY of Micromanaging
The first step towards surviving a micromanager is to understand why they are micromanaging. There are three main reasons that bosses micromanage:
It’s Not the Boss, It’s You: A little people-watching should reveal to you whether the manager acts this way with everyone on the team or whether it’s just you. Yes – it actually is possible that you’re the only one (or a part of small number of people) in a larger team that are getting the “breathing down your neck” treatment from the boss. If this is the case, you’re probably perceived as not meeting the standards of professionalism where you work. I had one colleague complain about being micromanaged by our mutual boss, while never seeming to realize that she left early both for lunch and at the end of the day and seemed to arrive late most mornings and when returning from lunch. On top of that , the quality of her work was mediocre on her best days and was frequently late. Sadly – some people need to be micromanaged or the manager might never get an honest day’s work out of them.
Bad bosses make the team less effective, not more effective
It’s the Boss, and They Know It: This second sort of boss is probably the worst kind that you’ll ever worked for in my professional career (stints at fast-food places as a teenager excluded). This sort of boss revels in being the boss. They don’t really care if you’re good at what you do or if the team is particularly successful (though they don’t want their team to become an abject failure since this puts them in jeopardy with their own boss). Instead, this boss is most interested in the exercise of power and might do things like require undue approval, frequent reports and status meetings, and frequent revisions to the work you’re doing. This sort of micromanaging boss is also prone to publicly disciplining their subordinates. There’s seldom much you can do to make this work environment better and, almost always, the team experiences high turnover – losing most members with 24-36 months.
It’s the Boss, and They DON’T Know It: This final type of boss is one that you can work with. And if they’re otherwise a rational and reasonable person, someone you can probably prosper with. In this case, the micromanaging boss is unconsciously motivated by fear and anxiety. At some point in their past, they failed miserably due to some situation that went out of their control. Now that they’re in charge, they’ll do everything in their power (subconsciously or not) to make sure they never experience that again usually by micromanaging everyone on their team.
If the scenario is about your work behavior, then fix that first. Don’t give a micromanaging boss any excuse to watch you like a hungry hawk by being surfing the Internet, hanging out at the water cooler, or not being timely. If the scenario is about a boss who uses micromanagement as a means of exercising power, simply get out of that team as soon as possible. But what about the third scenario?
Anxiety Manifested as Micromanaging
So what are the tips and tricks needed to get past the boss who micromanages due to a subconscious but exaggerated sense of anxiety? Again, the good news here is that by properly understanding what keeps these bosses up at night, you can answer those needs out of your own initiative thereby giving them good cause to loosen their grip on your every move and show some trust in your talents.
Prioritize: Micromanagers tend to change priorities on the fly because they get caught up in specific, very granular details on a project. They’re notorious for trying to add a multitude of tiny changes that, when taken as a whole, double the amount of effort. However, the granular details are usually unimportant to the success of the project. So it’s your job to keep the micromanager’s eyes on the prize and not focused on the minutia.
Communicate frequently about progress on the project in general (see below).
Send ad hoc emails summarizing any changes in scope and your understanding of the boss’ expectations regarding those changes. Make sure that you also estimate a change in scope to the teams overall ability to meet its objectives. One big change or lots of small changes are equally likely to derail a project or make a team ineffective. Make sure that you explain that sort of impact in your recap email.
It’s even more important to provide recap emails if a scope change comes out of a verbal exchange. Verbal exchanges, after all, don’t have a paper trail if there’s ever a dispute.
Develop a shorthand or code for prioritizing work that makes sense to you both. Any time the micromanager tries to pile on too much work or make too many changes, make sure that they rate such work on a scale of importance. It doesn’t matter what the scale is, 5-stars or 5-alarms for urgent, as long as you both agree. If you have 30 low-priority action items on your list and 1 top-priority item, you both already know which one you should be working on.
Perhaps most importantly, use the micromanager’s nit-pickiness to renegotiate priorities to your advantage. If they ask for such big changes that it impacts the project deadlines or ask for so many small changes that you can’t make any forward progress, don’t say “Yes, I can do that”. Instead, any time they suggest more than a very minor change, tell them “I can do that, but only if one of these other changes drops of the list. Which of these do you want me to put on the backburner?” They’ll feel engaged and see your own level of engagement and dedication to the project as a positive.
As an add-on to reprioritizing, you must put double-emphasis on any action items that you need from them. In a sense, you should micromanage them! By making clear where you need their help to make the project a success, you keep their eyes on the big goal. Plus, by forcing them to refocus on their own responsibilities, you gain a little extra space to get your work done without them constantly looking over your shoulder.
Overcommunicate: Micromanagers, whether they’ll admit it or not, are afraid of not knowing what’s going on. You can conquer the micromanager’s need to be constantly “up in your stuff” by providing them timely updates on your projects and activities.
Provide email updates more often than you might normally like, a couple times per week at least. The emails should not only detail progress on the project, but also provide a steady stream of reassurances that you’re on track regarding timelines and that you’re aware of the importance of the project. This alone will go a long way towards quelling their inner anxieties.
Make sure that they call meetings that accomplish a specific goal: deciding on an important strategy, setting the priority on a bunch of work orders, anything but mere status updates. Status meetings are a huge waste of time. Everyone at the table waits and wastes 50 minutes in a 60 minute meeting, since each person talks in turn and usually try to hard to make themselves look good in the process.
Don’t hide behind email. We have many types of communication available, each with their own degree of intimacy and immediacy. Email is distant. If things aren’t going well or your own stress-levels are going through the roof, sit down with the micromanager for a talk. If you’re not geographically close, ask for a phone call. It’s easy to turn a blind eye to an IM and to procrastinate on an email. But an in-person meeting sets a very different tone.
During this conversation, remind the manager that you’re there to make their projects (and by extension, them) a success and that “administrivia” has reached a level where it’s impeding your ability to engender their success.
You might want to appeal to their sense of propriety – every business relationship is an implicit contract (if not an explicit one). That means both parties have certain responsibilities. The agreement between superior and subordinate is “you do want I ask and I’ll try to make that as easy for you as possible”. You can appeal to the micromanager’s ingrained desire to keep an agreement by gently showing where their side of the agreement has gone off course. Demonstrate how much work you’ve accomplished using your email paper trail as evidence, then use the same evidence to show the degree of unneeded or additional work heaped on you. Refocus the micromanager on the project goals and deadlines, and then point out that there’s simply too much micromanaging, er, work required to meet the deadline. In a sense, you’re steering them to the decision that you want them to make – more trust to get things done, a little less ad hoc reports, fewer boring and unproductive meetings.
Use inclusive pronouns like “we” and “us” to set a collaborative and consensual tone, something like “We’ve got way too much on our plate to get all of this done by the deadline. We don’t want this to be a flop. Which of these can we drop to get us back on track?”
Tenacity: Keep at it. Micromanagers act the way they do literally because of who they are. You can very likely build enough trust with a micromanaging boss to earn a few feet of breathing space and less scrupulous attention detail. But you’ll never fully escape it if you work for a micromanager. You’ll have to build attention to detail and overcommunication into your daily routine. As it says on the shampoo bottle, “lather, rinse, repeat” then get up and do it again tomorrow.
Gimme the Cliff Notes
Micromanagers make us feel untrusted and stymied by their constant need for tediously detailed and frequent updates, constant changes to minor details of our work, and overly developed attention to administrative details that really don’t matter in our daily job. But there’s hope! By proactively micromanaging the micromanager, you can build trust and earn their respect. Overcommunicate on the details of your work. Constantly seek their explicit prioritization for changes to your scope of work. Make sure that any changes are rated for importance and evaluated against the overall goals of the team. And when things get bad enough, schedule a meeting to realign project tasks and to get the project back towards accomplishing your mutual goals within a defined deadline.
You’ve probably found that the prefix “lead” is a fairly common occurrence in the technology world. We have “lead developers”, “lead DBAs”, “lead architects”, and “lead consultants”. Yet, we don’t have “lead managers”, “lead directors”, or “lead VPs”. Why is that?
Well, there are probably a number of different reasons for having “lead” technologist titles depending on who you ask. For example, the HR department might say that adding “lead” to a technologist’s title justifies the better salary that the company had to pay to acquire that specific talent. The IT department chiefs might say that adding “lead” to a title is a way to designate the most experienced and skilled members of staff. While people actually holding these titles, I think, are likely to say that “lead” is in their title because they informal leaders of their respective teams. And I say informal leaders because they drive opinion and help set priorities, but very few of them, in my experience, actually have neither the outright power to hire and fire team members nor the power to grant raises, promote or demote, etc.
Compare this situation with managers, directors, and vice-presidents, all of whom have the explicit authority to hire, fire, promote, demote, and otherwise make life wonderful or miserable for their subordinates. Because their authority is explicit, there’s no need to toss in a “lead” with their title. Ironically, people in these positions are expected to manage the operation of their team but very few of them exhibit qualities of leadership (more on that in another post).
The authority inherent in these two categories of jobs, lead technologists and managers, similarly breaks down into two broad categories, influence versus authority. Management has authority. The boss can come in and simply tell you what to do. But technology leads must get things done through influence. And while authority is something invested in the manager by the company, influence is something that is earned.
So here are some tips on growing your influence in the organization. Influence is a direct outgrowth of credibility. So if you’re not yet the lead on your team but want to be, or if you are the lead and want to enhance your influence, remember these few tips:
A technologist’s credibility stems first from his or her competence with the technology. You’d better have a better than average skill with your technology. You will not be viewed as competent without it. If you’re not competent, you also aren’t credible.
An influencer is also a communicator. If you’re the silent type, or you don’t much voice your opinions, you can be the most competent person on the team but have no influence and, generally, be ignored. You’ll need to formulate opinions readily and voice them frequently. What d’you think about moving the architecture to 64-bit? If you have no opinion on the important questions, then you’re not ready to be the lead.
Be a good listener. Every technologist knows there are a dozen ways to solve a technology problem. Just because you have an opinion about how to tackle the problem doesn’t mean that the rest of the team’s opinion doesn’t matter. Give everyone a hearing and even allow team consensus to settle on the best solution.
Build up your team. Work to get the most talented people you can and then work to get them training to keep them on the cutting edge. The competence and credibility of your team enhances your own credibility.
Always be fair. Fairness heightens your credibility, which in turn leads to greater credibility. Give team mates equal time to speak their mind and don’t be arbitrary. Praise publicly and discipline privately. Never snipe a team mate or even people on other teams and, if you disagree, do so publicly but rationally and based on quantitative reasons. Going on gut feelings will reduce your credibility. And if you don’t win your argument, politely “agree to disagree” then move on. Dredging up the past also reduces your credibility.
Strongly credible lead technologists are then able to use their influence to set the course of their team, assign tasks and jobs to people, drive projects, and implement policies and procedures. Have you ever worked on a team where the team lead lacked credibility? How well did they accomplish these and other tasks they were responsible for?
These tips are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons more ways to enhance your credibility and, in turn, your influence. If you have another story about how you built up your own or your team’s credibility, lay it on me. I always want to hear your feedback!
Of course, I’m always open to your questions about soft skill questions and will try to address them in future posts.
