Technical leadership contributes to career growth and personal satisfaction. Here are some ways you can build your technical leadership:

• Take on greater responsibilities. Tell your manager or project manager that you would like  to work on more complex tasks, and find out what skills you need to develop in order to perform those tasks.
• Practice relentless improvement. Look for ways to work more effectively or efficiently, and share your improved practices with your colleagues.
• Document and share what you know. Write down what you’ve learned. Share your insights through e-mail, blog posts, lunch-and-learn sessions, webinars, and other channels.
• Mentor others. Coach people on specific skills or technologies in order to improve the capabilities of your team.

How are you building your technical leadership?

…It is important to note that by simply participating, managers transfer their status into the new paradigm; while not participating creates a real discrepancy.

Cecille Demailly, Toward Enterprise 2.0: Making the Change in the Corporation, as cited in Bill Ives’ blog post

Sarah Siegel’s reflections on virtual leadership made me think about the changes that IBM is going through. We’re moving further apart from each other (more remote/mobile workers, more geographically-spread management functions), and at the same time, moving closer to each other through social networking tools. Front-line managers might still see many of their team members face to face, but dotted-line relationships across countries are becoming more and more widespread, and middle managers work in an increasingly virtual world.

Many people struggle to translate management and leadership skills to the virtual world. They feel the loss of contact as we move away from offices and co-located teams, but they don’t have a lot of guidance on what excellent leadership looks like in this new globally-integrated world. There are no recipes or clear best practices in standard management and communication books, in the MBA courses they might have taken, and in the business magazines. Their own managers might also be dealing with the growing pains of the organization.

So some managers participate, and many don’t. The ones who participate are figuring out what works, and they may make mistakes along the way. The ones who don’t participate (out of fear? lack of time? lack of confidence?) might end up finding it even harder to get started, and then people feel confused and isolated because they aren’t getting leadership and direction from the people who are supposed to lead them.

I think managers really do want to help people work more effectively. It’s hard with all the external pressures and the pace of change, tools that are constantly evolving and practices that need to be adapted for the times, and greater challenges from both inside and outside IBM. Communities like the one Sarah Siegel organizes for IBM managers are vital, because managers need to be able to connect with other managers and learn from each other.

There are no clear answers yet. Organizations around the world are still figuring things out. Many of the principles remain the same, but translating them online when you can’t see body language and you can’t make eye contact is difficult for many people.

People need to learn how to not only work around the challenges of a virtual world, but also take advantage of its strengths. And there are strengths. Virtual teams are not just shadows of what we can do face-to-face. Going online brings new capabilities that we can explore.

We need to help managers figure this out. Along the way, we’ll end up helping ourselves and other people, so it’s worth the effort.

I remember growing up and realizing that even though I’m the youngest of three children, my parents were learning all sorts of new things about parenting while raising me. That helped make it easier for me to understand them instead of getting frustrated or upset. It’s like that with managers, too. Managers are learning about working with us just as we’re learning to work with them and with IBM.

So, how can we help? Here are some ways:

• We can explore and model behaviour. For example, I believe that a culture of knowledge-sharing can make a real difference to IBM. If I experiment with that and model the behaviour, I can help managers and non-managers see what it’s like, what the benefits are, and how to get started. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
• We can give feedback. I think my manager finds it amusing that I think a lot about what brings out the best in me and I suggest that to him. Managers can’t read minds. Make it easy. If your manager is receptive to the idea, give suggestions and share what you think.
• We can coach. When the pain of ineffective methods is strong enough to drive change (think about all the frustration over endless reply-to-all conversations), people will look for better ways to do things. Coach people on how to use tools and how to change practices. It’ll take time and they’ll probably get frustrated along the way, but you can help them keep their eyes on the goal (and remember how painful the old ways were!).
• We can help people see the big picture. Resource actions can sap morale. Impersonal communications can make you feel that the company has drifted from its values. Even if people are afraid, you can work on making sense of the situation, focusing on the positive, and looking for ways to keep moving forward. Vision isn’t just the CEO’s job. What you say and how you act can influence how other people feel about their work and how well they can focus on making things better instead of getting lost in the stress.

There are a lot of individual contributors within IBM. If we see leadership as something everyone in the organization does instead of being limited to those who have the “manager” bit in their Bluepages record, if we remember that leadership competencies are something we can express no matter where we are in the organizational chart and we take responsibility for helping make IBM and the world better, and if we help as many people as we can, we’ll not only get through these growing pains, but we’ll make a company worth working with even more.

Thanks to Rawn Shah for sharing a link to Bill’s blog post through Lotus Connections Profiles, and to Sarah for prompting me to write more about this!

Norman Lear would add to this that the goal isn't worth arriving at unless you enjoy the journey. “You have to look at success, incrementally,” he said. “It takes too long to get to any major success…. If one can look at life as being successful on a moment-by-moment basis, one might find that most of it is successful. And take the bow inside for it. When we wait for the big bow, it's a lousy bargain. They don't come but once in too a long time. ” (p.51)

No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders.

So the point is not to become a leader. The point is to become yourself, to use yourself completely — all your skills, gifts, and energies — in order to make your vision manifest. (p.111-112)

On Becoming A Leader: Revised Edition Warren Bennis

(Disclosure: The link above is an Amazon affiliate link. That said, I recommend checking out your local library. I got this book from the Toronto Public Library, yay!)

Many people worked long hours and sacrifice other parts of their lives in order to achieve career success. They want the executive title, the high salaries, the decision-making power, and the recognition. I don't think that kind of career lifestyle is a great fit for me. Instead of sacrificing so much for a big potential payoff, I'd rather focus on living well at each step, and feeling successful in each moment. The core of my work is figuring out who I am, what talents I can bring, and what difference I can make.

What could help you express yourself more fully?

We facilitated “Remote Presentations That Rock” for the second women’s leadership group a few weeks ago. After watching the video, one of the participants (Ruhuni) said that the tips sounded very familiar. She asked us if our executive sponsor (Sharon) had been in the previous session. Ruhuni said that she had been working on a presentation for a number of weeks. Then Sharon came in with a bunch of fresh ideas and tips for making the presentation even better. Ruhuni recognized the tips in the video, which made her laugh.

That’s when you know a training program works. People not only implement the ideas, they tell other people about them!

We’re developing a series of virtual leadership sessions. Remote Presentations That Rock is the first. The next sessions will cover facilitating remote meetings, collaborating across cultures, and working with virtual teams. Please feel free to reuse the material and organize your own groups! I’d be happy to answer questions through blog comments, conference calls, e-mail, and so on.

Here are my notes from the Top Talent call on informed judgment, one of IBM’s leadership competencies. Click on the image to see it full-size.

The speaker recommended checking out Blink. Blink is a good read, but compared to Gladwell’s other books, it doesn’t have as much meat as, say, “The Tipping Point.” One of my favourite problem-solving books is Ken Watanabe’s Problem Solving 101, which was written for schoolkids and is therefore very practical and easy to read.

My key take-away from this talk was to improve the traceability for my decisions by documenting the assumptions, data, experiences, and previous decisions I am basing new decisions on.

Hope this helps!

Visual notes from the women’s leadership session I helped facilitate. =) The ice-breaker was “What superpower would you like to have?”, hence the icons along the top.

It was fun taking visual notes during  the discussion of my Remote Presentations That Rock session!

Leading Out Loud: Inspiring Change Through Authentic Communications
Terry Pearce, 2003

Excellent advice on being authentic. Good point starting p133 about when not to take questions, and how to address difficult questions.

When not to take questions:

If the speech is your first advocacy for a change, it is likely to be more abstract and less specific, written to inspire with context and values. Questions could prove frustrating for you and your listeners, and could drain away the excitement that your initial speech has generated. If your audience is large, taking questions is logistically difficult. The process needs to be tailored both to allow representative questions to be asked and to avoid ill feelings in someone not recognized due to time constrains.

… More typically the size of audience and nature of material are not prohibitive, and in such cases you should always offer the audience the chance to clarify, contribute, or challenge your comments. When others can really participate, they are more likely to feel ownership and commitment. In offering to take questions, you are offering a direct relationship to individuals, in addition to the group as a whole. You build expectations of candor in the audience, and can greatly enhance or damage the credibility and trust you have constructed during the speech.

p133, Terry Pearce, Leading Out Loud, 2003

These are the five primary elements of the invested listening model:

• Answering the stated and unstated question
• Acknowledging feelings
• Finding common intent
• Distinguishing between your context, or point of view, and the questioner’s point of view
• Checking in: making sure that you have been responsive

p139, Terry Pearce, Leading Out Loud, 2003

Leading Out Loud is well worth revisiting and keeping around for inspiration.