Mr. T Wants To Be a Project Manager
A casual conversation between an Engineer and a Manager
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
The room was ready and another casual “one-on-one” meeting started. Mr. T a very good engineer who had just delivered a major project, seems happy to discuss recent events. I was under the impression the meeting would be 90% describing how amazing work we did, and finalizing with a big “thank you for your contribution” punchline. The meeting started this way until he started to ask for more. More money? It would be easier to address. Mr. T wanted more responsibilities. Not technical responsabilities. Mr. T wanted to prepare for a new stage of his career. He wanted to become a Project Manager.
There is a reason why during the the recruitment phase we search for people with the ambition to grow professionally. They have a self-motivation drive for performing on a project without the need for a Leader padding them on the back. Mr. T was no different. Highly professional, minutious on the details, highly knowledgeable on the technical aspects. But unfortunately, no connection with his peers, no rapport building, long emails about project status where a couple of lines would be enough, and no network with his technical counterparts. A typical case of a good technical engineer with almost no skillset for the people part of the job. That “one-on-one” meeting had become a career rescue project. How could Mr. T salvage this?
Networking and Rapport
I know! It’s a cliché but is the real deal. One of the best things a manager can have is a network to leverage when something goes wrong. Building a network takes time (and social energy). Is important to understand the chain of command in a given organization, the scope linked to person A or B, and how they can help if a problem arises. In big organizations is incredibly important to be aware of the ongoing politics, the processes, and key contact points for speeding up requests when needed. IT Developers tend to overlook all of this, when in fact, is a centerpiece of any management position.
People Management
An engineer can have all the Leadership training included in the HR catalog, but it doesn’t replace on-the-job situations and personal connections. Managing people is not telling them what to do. Good people management typically doesn’t need to tell people what to do (Kanban anyone?). They feel motivated and take initiative even if the project is not the best one in the organization. To arrive at this achievement, is important to understand what makes each person tick professionally: Wants to grow to new responsibilities? Is the person more focused on the technical challenges and learning opportunities? Does the person only want to add technology X and Y to the CV? This requires a lot of effort with conversation and experience to understand each team member. So it’s important to build trust between the new manager and the team member.
Practical Tips For Improving
Assuming Mr. T is already running through the HR catalog, the tips for improving both people management and networking skills will require a lot of effort. In this particular case, Mr. T was working on a very big organization where it has a series of cross-team initiatives to improve overall IT processes and pain points. My first recommendation was for Mr. T to contact directly the Manager responsible for these cross-team initiatives and propose himself as a tribute.
Cross-team projects are great for having an overview of different teams and their scope, as well build a solid contact network inside the organization. If, for example, the database needs a technical intervention, is handy to have the head of DBAs on the contact shortlist, especially if the engineer has a previous direct work connection with that person. Any sort of initiative that allows to build of bridges between different teams, is great networking stuff.
Because there was a soft skills issue with Mr. T, especially in the people department, I questioned which were the hobbies he had. Unfortunately, video games are only great for building dexterity skills, not for building a career in Management. Even board games are better for improving these skills because there is an art of winning in someone’s face and building the skills to be nice about it.
The goal is to have some sort of hobby that allows the construction and improvement of human reading and interaction. It’s not expected for Mr. T to become the next host of Saturday Night Live, but building some sort of personal skills is highly advantageous. I have suggested Mr. T to sign up for theatre classes since they are great for reading other people’s body language and developing presentation skills.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur
