From IC to manager
Mindset, and self-image, don't change overnight
In last week’s post, I had this to say about keeping up to date on tech skills as a manager:
You’re probably going to fall behind on the technical skills. This was something that, frankly, I had a hard time coming to terms with myself in my first managerial role. Everyone on my team was keeping up to date with the skills and technologies that our customers were using, and I was falling further and further behind. Eventually I had to make my peace with it—a support team manager needs to be able to pitch in on technical issues in a pinch, sure, but their main job is to lead the team, help everyone on it be successful, and make sure the work gets done. Keeping up on bleeding-edge technology is secondary to all that.
This really resonated with at least one reader, who suggested I expand it into a post in its own right, which brings us to today’s topic. At some point in your career, you may find yourself either promoted (hopefully with your consent) to a leadership role, or taking a new job as a team lead or manager. Tech skill atrophy isn’t the only change that you’ll be facing as you move from an individual contributor (IC) to a leadership role. We’ll look at a few today: the aforementioned tech skills issue, the transition from coworker to boss, and the mindset shift from tactical to strategic. One thing all of these changes have in common is this: you, and your own ego, will be one of the biggest impediments to a successful transition. You’re in a new role, and your mindset is going to have to shift accordingly. It won’t happen overnight, and it may not be easy, but recognizing that this shift has to happen will help the transition go a lot more smoothly for you.
You won’t be hands-on as much
For most good support engineers, your technical skillset is what you’ve spent your career perfecting, and is the most valuable tool you bring with you to every new role. You take pride in the new, exotic, or obsolete technologies you’ve mastered, and you are never happier than when you can diagnose and resolve a thorny customer issue quickly and efficiently.
And then you move into a leadership role, and all of that doesn’t matter (as much) anymore. Instead, you are thrown into a new world of people management, process management and improvement, strategic planning, budgeting. If you’re handling support issues at all, it’s probably going to be a lot less than before which, as I pointed out last week, means that your prized technical skills are not going to be keeping up with the rest of the team. This shift can be jarring, and as I mentioned above was a real friction point for me for a while. So much of our self-image is tied up in being good at our chosen career, and when that career changes, it can take a while for the self-image to catch up. If we’re moving from one role to a different one—support to software engineering, say—it goes without saying that we’ll need to pick up new skills to match. But when we’re going from one level to another in the same team—IC to manager in Support—the needed mindset shift is not as immediately apparent. You’re still working with the same people, dealing with the same issues, but you need to look at them in a different way.
You’re going to have to come to terms with this change sooner rather than later, for two main reasons. First, for your own peace of mind you need to recognize that your focus has shifted, and it’s okay that you’re not as good at bash scripting as Dan, or as much of a Terraform wizard as Mary. Second, you’ll be spending all of your time polishing your own technical skills and neglecting what your team really needs: oversight and leadership.
You’re a leader—act like one
This is obviously a much bigger topic than I can cover in a few paragraphs, but there’s just one specific point I want to make today: don’t confuse your direct reports with coworkers, or you risk setting a very bad precedent for team culture.
When you’re on a support team, you build rapport with your team members that helps you all work together on good days and bad. You create inside jokes, commiserate over difficult or overwhelming support shifts, and vent about terrible customers or unhelpful business partners. Some of that, I’m afraid to say, is going to have to go away when you’re in a leadership position. When your entire team is looking to you for guidance, it is important to set the tone appropriately. Inside jokes and commiseration are still fine, as long as you remember to keep things professional and positive, but you’re not going to be able to vent to, or confide in, your team members like you might have been able to when they were just your coworkers.
This is another lesson that it took me almost too long to learn. I spent twenty years in an IC role before my first shot at management, and while I took to the role well, it took me quite a while to internalize that my relationships had to change. I was used to being a cog in a larger team, working along other cogs, cracking jokes, complaining, and building relationships with humor. Now that I was leading a team, the atmosphere changed. Offhand jokes were taken seriously, and I more than once barely stopped myself from complaining bitterly to my employees about recent shared frustrations. I could easily have let my team become cynical, complacent, and frankly a pain to work with, all because I was still thinking of my direct reports as coworkers. Don’t let that happen to you!
The good news: you can still vent, just not to your own team. Talk to your colleagues at the same level in other teams (with discretion) or, even better, friends at different companies entirely. It’s healthy to express frustration, but be careful who you’re expressing it to and the impression you may be making on them.
Understand the big picture
Hand in hand with transitioning to leadership is having a more direct view into, and impact on, company strategy. As an IC, your typical interactions with company or even departmental strategy are somewhat limited: it’s conveyed to you, if you’re lucky, and you do your best to follow it. Your attention is much more at the tactical level: solving the issues in front of you, and helping customers one at a time. As a manager, you need to take a broader view. Individual tickets, while still important, can’t take up all of your attention as they did before. Instead, you need to look at issues in the aggregate: what aspects of the product are causing customers grief? Which customers are having the most problems, and what do they all have in common? How is your overall ticket load? These are the questions you need to be concerned with, while leaving the resolution of individual issues to your skilled team.
This is another place that your own self-image needs to change: you can’t be consumed with the details, because there are far too many of them across your team. You need to direct your attention carefully to the topics you’re directly responsible for (the overall health and effectiveness of the support team) and delegate everything you can. Going back to strategy, you’re going to have a lot more involvement: you’ll be setting your team strategy, you’ll have some input on company strategy, and you’ll understand more deeply what it is your team needs to accomplish to support the company strategy. That’s where you need to be spending your attention, rather than involving yourself deeply in every ticket your team handles.
While there are a lot of adjustments required when you move from an IC support engineer to a leadership role, the opportunities are great. If you can’t make the necessary shifts in mindset, you’ll find yourself running in place or even doing damage to the team you’re trying to lead. If you can navigate those changes, on the other hand, while learning and practicing the new skills that are most relevant to your success in your new role, you’ll be well positioned to lead your team as it grows and evolves.
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