The Reluctant Leader: From Technical Expert to Human Expert

By Eva C. Doyle

Whether youve been promoted at work, want a higher-paying position or need help navigating office politics, youre going to need leadership skills.
Eva C. Doyle, a longtime trainer who has worked for a bank, a software company, and the Department of Defense, believes anyone can cultivate these skills. In this book on developing leadership skills, youll learn how to:
navigate your internal transition from expert to leader;
get to know and introduce yourself to your team;
learn to become comfortable with your authority; and
offer praise and negative criticism.
Youll also learn how to find allies and mentors in the workplace, help other employees develop leadership skills, encourage co-workers to act like teammates, and set the right tone every single day.
You may have never thought of becoming a leader, but if youve been asked to become one or think its time to take on a new role, you need to take proactive steps to succeed. Get the practical guidance you need with The Reluctant Leader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480831186

Eva C. Doyle

Eva C. Doyle earned an MBA from the University of Maryland Smith School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Tennessee. She has worked for a bank, a software company, and the Department of Defense, spending much of her career focused on improving employee skill sets and job performance.

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Copyright © 2016 Eva C. Doyle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Credit for AU photo: Phil Taylor Photography UK

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-3116-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3117-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3118-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016909727

Archway Publishing rev. date: 08/17/2016

Contents

Introduction

Who Can Benefit From Reading This Book

Are You Ready?

Part I: Taking The Plunge

1. Preparing for Leadership

Aren’t Leaders Born, Not Made?

Musicians and Leadership

The Inevitable Leadership Sports Analogy

Putting It Into Practice

2. Managers Versus Leaders

Leaders

Managers

Leaders AND Managers

Putting It Into Practice

3. Introduction to Leadership Skills

A Positive Attitude

Putting It Into Practice

4. Skill No. 1—Listening

Communication Competence

Improving Your Listening Skills

Putting It Into Practice

5. Skill No. 2—Learning To Adjust To a Shift In Identity

A Loss As Well As a Gain

Making The Identity Shift – A How Not To Do It Example

Making Your Identity Shift

Putting It Into Practice

6. Skill No. 3—Learning to Become Comfortable With Your Authority

Own Your Role

Putting It Into Practice

7. Take Care of Yourself, Because No One Else Will

Things to Pursue

Things to Avoid

Putting It Into Practice

Conclusion—Part I

Part II: What Do You Do Now?

8. The Reluctant Leader Becomes a Manager

Get To Know Your Team

Introduce Yourself To The Team

Putting It Into Practice

9. Formal Instruction—What To Look For

Competency Models

Putting It Into Practice

10. If Listening is a Gift to your Employees, Questions are A Gift to Yourself OR

Questions – The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Putting It Into Practice

11. Communication Styles Part I—Email

When to Use Email

Putting It Into Practice

12. Communication Styles Part 2—Public Speaking

Learning by Doing

Putting It Into Practice

13. Strategic Planning

A Brief Primer

Tactical Versus Strategic Planning

Surviving a Strategic Plan

Why Don’t Strategic Plans Work?

Your Own Plan, Strategic or Otherwise

Putting It Into Practice

14. Vision

IBM, Gerstner, and Vision

Other Examples of Vision

Getting Others To See Your Vision

Putting It Into Practice

Conclusion—Part II

Part III—You and Your Team

15. Making Decisions

Your Decision Making Process

Facts and Ambiguity

Facts and Emotion

Avoiding Decisions

Your Devil’s Advocate

Encouraging Your Subordinates To Disagree With You

Backing Out of Decisions

Making Decisions in Emergencies

Putting It Into Practice

16. Communicating and Implementing Decisions

Execution

Drowning in Detail

Putting It Into Practice

17. Delegating

Delegating To Pairs Of People

Delegating To Teams

What Are Check-In Points?

Delegating Tasks That You Receive

Putting It into Practice

18. Providing Feedback

Public Praise/Feedback

Private Praise/Feedback

Negative/Constructive Feedback

Getting Feedback for Yourself

Putting It Into Practice

19. Employee Evaluations, Awards, and Other Morale Killers

The Annual Evaluation Cycle

Awards

Service Awards

Project Awards

The Atypical Award – A Note From You

The Best Award of All – Wanting To Come To Work

Putting It Into Practice

20. Hiring, or: Playing the People Lottery

A Good Attitude

The Past Is The Best Predictor For The Future

Questions On Actual Knowledge

Soft Skills – The Ones That Often Matter The Most

Putting It Into Practice

Sample Job Opening

Sample Interview Questions

Discussion of Interview Questions

Questions That Could Use Some Improvement

21. Team Building

Briefings From Each Part of The Team

Facilitated Activities and Discussions

Facilitated Exercise

SWOT/SWOON

Resiliency As Part of Team Building

Putting It Into Practice

22. Setting The Tone

Setting The Morning Tone

Strategies

Things You Might Want to Avoid

Your Tone and Organizational Decisions

But I Don’t Care About Sports

Putting It Into Practice

23. When Good Employees Go Bad

An Inherited Bad Employee

Employees That Don’t Get Along

Employees That Mislead You

Employees That Don’t Do Their Assigned Tasks

Employees That Don’t Take Direction

When Is It OK To Show Anger?

Taking Care Of Yourself In This Process

Putting It Into Practice

24. What To Do When They Cry

The Occasional, Often Unexpected, Bout of Tears

The Regulars

Putting It Into Practice

25. Developing Your People

Classroom Training

Your Role In Classroom Training

Have Your People Lead a Training

On-The-Job Development

Putting It Into Practice

26. Money—How Your Organization Makes It

Income Statement

Balance Sheet

Putting It Into Practice

27. More on Your Company’s Money

Money and Business Ethics

Putting It Into Practice

Conclusion—Part III

Part IV—Your Critical Relationships

28. Managing Up

Putting It Into Practice

29. Your Second-in-Command

When You’re The Second-in-Command

Executive Assistant/Executive Officer

Putting It Into Practice

30. Finding Your Allies, Mentors and Champions

Your Employee Assistance Personnel

Mentors

Other Allies and Champions

Your Own Manager and Management Chain

Putting It Into Practice

Conclusion—Part IV

Wrapping It All Up

Resources in Alphabetical Order

Resources by Section

Appendices—The Extra Stuff

Appendix A—Eight Questions to Ask in Your First 30 Days

Appendix B—Get To Know The New Boss Game

Appendix C—Checklist for Delegating

Appendix D—Assessments

Appendix E—Team Building Activities

Appendix F—Training Organizations

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Dedicated to my husband, Chris, one of best leaders I know.

Introduction

You’re comfortable and confident in your field of expertise, whether it’s robotics or policy. But now, for one reason or another, you are considering moving into a corporate leadership role.

Most books on leadership seem to assume that everyone wants to be a leader and that seven habits or twenty-one irrefutable laws will get you there. A more realistic perspective may be that many people don’t particularly care if they’re leaders or not, but they find themselves contemplating the role for more control, a pay raise, or something else. Books that advertise some number of steps bring feeble comfort that it’s going to be easy, or at least sequential.

But the truth is that the ways to manage or lead well are close to infinite, much like the decimal places of pi. The right approach for one group may fail miserably with another. Good management is sometimes lucky guesswork. Other times, it can be a function of the environment. A good first sergeant, for example, may not make it as a manager in a freewheeling startup software company. And a successful manager may not be a successful executive.

So how is this book going to make a difference? You won’t find anything that is irrefutable. You will find suggestions, tools, resources, and even the daring thought that perhaps corporate leadership isn’t for you – and that’s perfectly fine.

The book is divided into two broad sections – first, a section on some core concepts about leadership, particularly as it applies to the corporate world. Then comes a section with specific skills leaders need to learn and practice. Some are soft skills, such as listening, and others are hard skills, such as how to understand your company’s finances. Each chapter has a Putting It Into Practice at the end, which contains exercises to give you a chance to practice the skills in the chapter.

Who Can Benefit From Reading This Book

This book is intended to minimize the pain and smooth the path as technical experts transition into leadership. But I also wanted to make it relevant to all the wide variety of folks who are a part of that journey.

Technical Experts – Are you thinking of making that leap into management? Or perhaps starting your own company? You’ll find many resources in here to make that change smoother for you, and you’ll become more effective in your leadership role much more quickly. Or are you determined to never go over to the management side of the house? Well, good for you – you know who you are. But reading this book will help you understand what happened to your colleagues who did just that. You can learn how to talk to them again.

Human Resource/Organizational Development/Training Professionals – Are you in a highly technical company that keeps promoting its experts into management roles, and you’re left dealing with the carnage? This book will provide resources, ideas, and exercises for you to use to influence your management cadre and try to smooth the path for all.

Executives – Are you impatient with the pace of your new managers, the ones you’ve lured from the technical side of the business? This book should help them come up to speed quickly, and help you understand what they’re going through.

New Employees – You’re not an expert or a manager at this point, but you need to work with people who hold one or both roles. Reading this book will help you better understand what’s going on inside their heads, and how to interact with them.

Sales People – Are you a salesperson in a technical environment? Are you wondering what is going on with these technical experts you have to depend on? Reading this book will help you understand their mindset, especially the ones who have moved from expertise to management, and are now interfacing with you (and maybe getting in your way).

Entrepreneurs – Do you need to grow your company? Are you concerned about giving management roles to your technical experts? Reading this book will help you decide which ones are likely to make that successful transition and which may not, and most importantly, how to help them make the shift successfully.

Are You Ready?

How do you know that you’re ready to try to make that leap from expert to leader? Like many big things in life, you’re never really ready. You can read all the books on leadership, attend all sorts of classes, interview current corporate leaders. But at some point, you just have to plunge in. Don’t let your perfectionism turn into paralysis.

Maybe an easier question to answer is how do you know when you’re not ready? One way is to listen to your gut. Is there a deep pit in your innards somewhere at the thought? That may be a sign that you’re not ready. Or it may be a sign that you know what you’re getting into …

At your core, do you just not like most people? Just not really care? They don’t interest you or they completely mystify you? If that’s true, then stick with technical expertise. Because dealing with people is at the core of leadership. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Do you have any sense of how others perceive you? Can you tell when people become uncomfortable or bored or are indeed genuinely interested in something? Those are skills you need as a leader, and you can learn them, but it helps if a bit of intuition already comes naturally.

Ultimately, leadership is service. Leadership is sacrifice. Leadership is sweat. Yes, it’s also about exercising power, which is what attracts a lot of people. But true leadership is exercising power in the interests of the people you lead. If you are willing to serve and sacrifice and sweat, then you’re at least ready to explore the topic.

And yes, leadership involves vision and direction and decisiveness and a host of other qualities. But ultimately it comes down to service. Sacrifice. Sweat. If you can give those things, people will follow you anywhere. They will forgive the occasional poor decisions and misdirection and a failure of vision.

And this is where the reluctance comes in. It makes sense to ponder what price you will pay to be a leader. Approaching the role with a sense of realism is important. But once you’ve agreed to the leadership role, there’s no more room for reluctance.

Service. Sacrifice. Sweat. And ultimately, satisfaction.

Part I: Taking The Plunge

1. Preparing for Leadership

We’ve established that, as a technical expert, you’re never really ready for a leadership role. But you can prepare. At age 48, I decided I wanted to run a triathlon (a distance race consisting of a swim, a bike ride, and a run). I didn’t know how to swim. But I knew I needed to prepare for that.

I refused to accept the common wisdom that adults can’t learn to swim, that there will always be a fear of the water, just like I refuse to believe that leaders are born and can’t be taught. I had swum as an adult, just doing the backstroke. I had some neck issues and used that as my excuse not to learn the front crawl, where you turn your neck to breathe.

But backstroke is not an ideal triathlon stroke, since you can’t really see where you’re going. I accepted the fact that I needed to learn to swim on my tummy. I signed up for swim clinics, swim lessons, read a lot about swimming, watched YouTube videos about swimming technique. I focused on bilateral breathing to minimize neck issues. I became a fairly steady (if slow) pool swimmer.

But swimming in a pool and swimming in a lake are very different experiences, just like first-level supervision and executive leadership are very different. Even as a competent pool-swimmer, I still struggled with the lake environment. There was no stripe on the bottom to follow. It was murky and cold. I remember watching Canada geese swimming in the water and tried not to think about all those icky green goose droppings I’d seen on the beach. They only do that on the shore, I tried to lie to myself.

In my first triathlon, regardless of the preparation, I panicked in the lake water. I wish I could tell you I calmed myself down and swam that half-mile like Missy Franklin. But Missy Franklin has never swum a half-mile like that. I dog paddled. I backstroked. I made up strokes. Every time I tried to put my face in that water, a deep voice within me (sounding a lot like Oprah Winfrey) said, Mm, mm, mm, girl, this is not happening today.

The shore seemed like it was getting farther away. A kayaker had to nudge me with his paddle to get me back on course at one point (kayakers are in the water as a safety measure, in case anyone really gets into trouble out there. Sort of like the way a mentor can help get you back on track). And the final humiliation was when a breaststroker kicked me hard in the chest. I was so mad. I wanted to grab her foot and pull it down, but I was too slow to catch up (she didn’t mean to – it’s a melee in the water. I didn’t care. Still wanted to smack her. Like I’ve wanted to smack some employees I’ve had).

But that anger gave me the energy to finish. Our 750 meter swim course had been laid out in a circle so that we exited the water on the other side of the boat ramp where we had started. As I trotted (slowly) up the ramp to get to my bike, I high-fived the women waiting for their turn in the lake (swimmers enter the water in waves, usually 100 swimmers every 3-4 minutes). They didn’t know how badly I had just swum that leg. They just saw that I’d completed it. I was able to give them the confidence that I could not give myself. This has also been true for my time as a leader, able to give others a sense of self-worth whether I had one at the time or not.

I made the transition to my bike, my favorite leg of the three. I love riding my bike. I’m slow, but I love it. I was determined not to get off the bike while on the short, but steep hill that was part of the course. There were other women walking their bike there, women who stopped for a breather, but I kept going. I was passed a lot, but