What Can I Do to Pursue a Leadership Track/Responsibilities?

Some tips for setting yourself up for a leadership path

I became a manager is at 25. I opened my own business.

I really believe in a tiered plan for success.

Look at where do you want to be in five years.

And wherever you want to be in five years, whether that’s in a lead role, or maybe you want to be in a manager role, and you want to be a lead role in three years, look at the end result.

So five years being my career plan, where do you want to be? What job title, or what salary range do you want to be at?

And then you can reverse engineer the plan. So where are you today, which would be year one, and where do you want to be in year five?

And then you can fill in year four, year three, and year two. The great thing about this tiered path to success is, you’ll be able to do career interviews with individuals who have those roles.

So let’s say you want to be a manager in five years or three years, you can ask managers you know for some time to literally interview them. What skills do you have? What were the most valuable skills that you needed to get into your role? How did you achieve your role?

And by asking these questions, most people I found in my career are very much willing to help others. They want to help because, the truth is, whoever has the management role now, they should have a five-year plan to be somewhere else in five years.

By doing these career interviews and asking them what skills, what education, what training, you can literally set up an entire five-year plan that will give you everything that you need.

For example, if you know you need a master’s degree in some field, maybe it’s an MBA, or maybe it’s an I.T. or maybe, it’s a cyber security degree, but you need that by five. By year one, you need to start researching. Year two, you need to be enrolled, because it’s going to take you two to three years to get that master’s degree. And so, by having this tiered plan for success, you’ll have a roadmap. And that’s really what you need.

Create a SWOT

We think of swots a lot for business. But I talk a lot to individuals on doing a career SWOT.

What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are the opportunities? What are the threats?

Strengths and weaknesses are generally internal. So it’s you, it’s a self-reflection activity. You don’t need to share it with anybody, because that can be scary.

Opportunities and threats are usually external. So what are the opportunities in your industry? Or if you want to stay in the same company, what are the threats? One of the threats, generally for IT people is, changing tech. What if the tech changes and you don’t have that change?

Don’t wait until you have the title to be a leader

If you wait until you have the title to try to be a leader, you’ve waited far too long

Leadership is being a rudder when there is no rudder. And on the team that you’re on, or the team that you’re joining, there will always be something.

The reason you’re joining the team is because there is some gap that they need filled.

And that’s your opportunity to see, hey, how can I help best? And that’s being a leader. That’s what being a leader is.

It’s finding the gap. It’s plugging the hole. And it’s motivating others to follow you.

You should have already picked up, not in title, but in actual day-to-day helping out, the existing lead, if there is one, filling in for whatever gaps there are on the team and helping others.

More people come to rely on you as a place to go when they need direction or as a place to go when they need help.

The better you are in setting yourself up for that leadership path.

Perform your core duties well before taking on additional responsibilities

As you’re naturally progressing on your career path, you can have this in mind. Wherever you’re at, in that level, do really well in that spot. Then, look for opportunities to expand your influence, and to expand the value that you’re providing.

One caveat: we don’t want to jump too far forward in the path.

I’ve seen some people that don’t say no enough, that take on too much, in an effort to impress. But then they spread themselves too thin, or it’s at the expense of their core responsibilities.

So whether you’re early in your career, mid-career, late in career, make sure that you’re doing your core competencies really well and knocking that out of the park. And then, once that’s nailed down, start to look for other areas where you can be a multiplier and start adding value beyond what’s normally expected.