Will leadership skills help in your career path?

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I just read a small article published at Certification Magazine called Developing Your Leadership Skills and it got me to thinking. A question came up on a Technical Writers discussion in a group I belong to through LinkedIn. The topic is Can a technical writer break into managerial roles in an organisation? We have a lot of people on this forum who have just entered the IT field or are trying to enter it and probably haven't thought of life 5, 10, or 15 years down the road. After all, you won't want to be upgrading PC RAM all your life. With that in mind, I decided to post this thread and poll.

Remember, "leadership" just doesn't mean being "the boss". It could mean, for example, moving into project management, or a similar role, where you'd be directing a team. Responses?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I think soft skills are becoming almost important as tech skills when it comes to most on site roles.

Read anywhere like techrepublic and they have reams of articles re the importance of soft skills, and the BCS encourages development of soft skills as well.

I personally, am looking to develop my soft skills once ive reached MCSE, things like time management, project management, writing, people skills and so on, can only help progression.

Then its just a case of showcasing these skills in your job role.

 

Yes, soft skills are very important, but not just when you reach a particulalr level. Nor do you only start learning those skills when you reach a level, such as MCSE.

IMHO, you begin to learn those skills - the management of your time, workload, communications, and so on - from the first day on the job. You continue to develop those skills throughout your career, even though you may not realise you're doing it.

It's only when you come to write up a CV that you actually appreciate you've been doing it all along: communication, leadership -training, mentoring, managing; customer facing; project managing - installation of IE7 onto 200 PCs in 3 weeks; installation of 10 PCs in an office in Wick, with all apps and updates delivered in a 1 week timeframe; taking and dealing with issues raised by customers...

I meant to add that any good manager should seek to develop those qualities in staff, to add to soft skills by giving different tasks and developing a role where possible and sometimes moving a person or promoting them to push them further.

 

I'm not sure what to put because having leadership skills can be a good thing when applying for jobs BUT developing those skills whilst in a job and getting some sort of authoritah over your team mates can have a negative effect.

I suppose it depends on how you handle it and how your team mates handle it.

 

I would personally rank soft skills, time management and team playing as very important for any job be it IT related or not.

On the other hand leadership skills would be more appropriate for senior roles i.e. supervisors, team leaders and managers and the likes. However, the above skill sets are mandatory for any role or job function. Just my three pence worth of opinion

 

Thats the joy of good soft skills, its also about being able to manage people without them feeling like you think they are s**t on your shoe (although this particular skill is sadly lacking in alot of managers)

 

I think leadership is also important in any job even if you are first line, when you take a call in first line I think most companies make the call taker the call owner so to a degree you need leadership skills to chase up 2nd 3rd line or where ever the call goes.

 

Valid point, that's true to a large extent but was looking at it purely from a managerial job view point. Thanks anyway

 

Absolutely.

 

I think there is an article on this very subject right here at CF, its a few years old now too I believe ;)

The author was an awesome fellow

 

Must have been you. BTW, welcome back from the wilds of Montana. Haven't seen you on Twitter/Facebook/wherever lately.

 

Montana kept me busy
squeezed a 75h project into 5 days, did over 60 actual hours

 

Soft skills and leadership skills are definitely something you cannot do without in the IT workplace.

 

Ill rephrase my original post to say further my soft skills lol.

In the past I have done NLP, listened to sales technique audio tapes, leadership audio tapes and so on, will be nice to revisit these and expand upon these.

 

Yes, I appreciate your idea that "leadership" just doesn't mean being "the boss", It's an ability to control the orientation of the company's development. I need to learn more as I'm gonna be promoted in my position.