I love promoting qualified and competent Information Technology (IT) professionals into leadership positions. It is one of the most fulfilling privileges of being an IT executive. I have had the pleasure of interviewing, hiring, and promoting many IT professionals during my 30-year career, and many of them have gone on to become executives themselves.
Studies have shown that IT professionals—i.e., geeks—in general are emotionally resilient, tough minded, and open to new ideas, and that they have a customer-service orientation (Lounsbury et al., n.d.). Over the years, as I have worked as a computer operator, a developer, a database administrator, a systems administrator, a project manager, and a program manager, I have found the results of this study to be true. I am proud to be a geek because we have the power to make an impact. The work we do improves lives.
In this chapter, I provide the criteria I look for when selecting a geek leader so that you can understand the characteristics required to succeed as a geek leader. Then, I also describe the geek leadership challenge. Finally, I provide an overview for this book to give you a roadmap for learning to be a better geek leader. My goal is to coach you on the characteristics needed to advance your career. My goal is to provide you with information that empowers you with confidence, enabling you to face and overcome leadership challenges.
When I hire and promote geeks into leadership positions, I look for answers to several questions concerning criteria that experts have found present in great leaders:
1. Does the geek have courage? Leaders need the mental and moral strength to take reasonable risks, persist during difficult times, and endure when situations seem difficult or dangerous. Leaders who are able to perform in the face of fear and difficulty inspire and motivate others. The passion to succeed fuels this courage.
2. Does the geek communicate well? Research has shown that project managers spend 90% of their time communicating (Rajkumar and KP, 2010). Leaders value the people around them and ensure that they receive the right information, in the right format, at the right time. Effective leaders listen closely before they respond, seeking understanding as well as feedback. They synchronize their responses with the stakeholder’s needs. A leader’s customers, team members, peers, and up-channel leadership are all his or her clients. Leaders restate crucial points for emphasis, requesting feedback as well as clarification to ensure understanding. Leaders establish a regular reporting rhythm utilizing the standard templates. They conduct regular meetings with their customers and their team members to review those reports.
3. Is the geek proactive? Leaders need to understand their priorities, then organize and execute in accordance with those priorities. Leaders take action to obtain realistic goals in a proactive manner. In order to deliver quality, effective leaders need to understand and implement the Deming Cycle:
• Plan: Plan the work, making use of input from team members and from various other stakeholders. Leaders are responsible for envisioning and communicating the future state and inspiring their team members to achieve this vision.
• Do: Do the job according to the strategy and the timetable.
• Check: Check the work, making an assessment of quality as well as risk.
• Act: Take action on the results of the assessment, ensuring quality and mitigating threats.
4. Is the geek capable of establishing and pursuing a unified vision? Leaders align their team’s tasks with the organization’s business objectives. Leaders comply with established policies and procedures for their team and their organization. Leaders must comply with both client requirements and business needs all at once. Leaders relate to people as individuals, no matter their function or position. They make sure everyone understands how their individual objectives align with the organization’s objectives.
5. Is the geek accountable? Leaders must take responsibility and hold their team members accountable. Leaders should know what is expected of them and use performance coaching to ensure their team members understand what is expected of them. Leaders must be capable of establishing a rhythm that results in meeting client requirements as part of a day-to-day routine:
• Document the criteria for performance expected in a work guideline, SOP, or other document.
• Train team members on the documented criteria. Do not hold individuals accountable for adhering to standards that have not been communicated through training.
• Measure and document results as team members execute the tasks they were trained to perform.
• Praise, incentivize, and reinforce achievement of standards, as well as redirect off-base performance as it happens.
6. Does the geek have personal credibility? Leaders need to be believable. They need the respect and trust of their customers, their managers, their peers, and their team members. They understand how their honesty, humility, and humor enable them to connect people at all levels within their organization.
7. Is the geek trustworthy and reliable? Leaders need to take a clear stance on issues and hold their ground. Management of trust is one of the essential factors in a leader’s perceived dependability.
8. Does the geek manage feelings? Charismatic leaders generate meaningful feelings in others. People feel that their job is more significant when they are the masters of their own behavior—that is, they feel competent. They feel a sense of comradery with their team mates. Leaders must be emotionally intelligent; they must be aware of their own feelings and their impact on the people around them.
9. Does the geek manage himself or herself well? Leaders are expected to have the ability to develop and modify habits to produce behaviors that result in organizational success. Self-management skills enable leaders to live a more efficient and effective daily life, break bad habits and obtain brand-new ones, complete difficult tasks, and obtain individual goals.
10. Does the geek lead by example? Leaders should model the actions they expect from their team members. Leaders set the example for continuous learning. They treat everyone fairly and with respect. Many people spend about 95% of their time thinking about themselves (Carnegie, 2010); leaders lead by spending time considering what they can do to meet the needs of others. Jackie Robinson said, “A life is not significant except for its impact on other lives.”
11. Can the geek manage risk? Leaders forecast risks and develop contingency as well as mitigation plans early. Leaders ask for assistance to make certain that risks are not realized—that they do not become problems. Leaders address and report both the good news and the bad news.
12. Is the geek a problem solver? Leaders create an environment in which issues are resolved at the lowest level. Effective leaders exercise Servant Leadership, solving their customers’, managers’, as well as team members’ problems before solving their own. Leaders search for creative solutions that enable everyone to succeed, creating synergistic solutions to problems. When leaders present problems to their managers and customers, they also present recommended solutions.
13. Is the geek capable of continuously improving processes? Leaders establish processes to gather and record lessons learned, continuously improving efficiency. Leaders identify and implement guides and tools that will improve their team’s capabilities. Leaders speak out, providing feedback to their management when processes are not working.
14. Does the geek understand the organization? Organizational behavior is the examination of both team and individual performance with respect to the organization. Leaders need to be aware of internal as well as external perceptions of the organization’s performance. Leaders who understand organizational behavior are more effective at leading change.
15. Does the geek balance work and life priorities? Leaders balance work requirements with personal and family requirements for both themselves and their team members. They make sure their team members are refreshed and prepared to contribute to project delivery.
Not every candidate that I have promoted or hired meets every one of these criteria. As we discuss in Chapter 2, Why Geek Leadership Is Different, many of these attributes do not come naturally to geek leaders. The IT geek leaders who were successful had strong communications skills. Not all of them were strong technically, but they understood enough about the technology to hold their IT team members accountable and to communicate well with stakeholders. They demonstrated the courage to be pro active and to make process improvements. If they came from outside the organization, they made the effort to learn how things worked and how their projects aligned with the organization. The unsuccessful IT geek leaders could not connect with their team members. They could not establish a unified vision for their team and could not build personal credibility. Some were simply not accountable, behaved poorly, and did not set a good example.
Some call the skills needed to become an effective leader “soft skills.” They place a higher value on mastering technical skills, such as programming routers with Internetworking Operating System commands or designing databases using Structured Query Language. But “soft skills” are not easy, and “soft” does not equate to “weak.” The IT industry’s best and most effective leaders know how to inspire their teams, how to connect with their customers, and how to influence people and situations in a manner that gives them control and enables success. When a leader accomplishes those feats, it seems like magic. These people are powerful—there is nothing “soft” or “weak” about them, and their work is not “easy.”
The skills needed to be a great engineer, developer, or systems administrator do not help you become a great leader. If you feel you cannot identify with the leadership criteria presented above, and if you aspire to become a leader, then this book is for you. You can have the strength, power, and success of other successful IT geek leaders. To become a better leader, you need to develop new skills, a task you are perfectly capable of performing. By becoming an IT professional, you have demonstrated your power, your ability to learn complex concepts. If you apply yourself, you can also use this power to become an effective leader and earn the increased prestige and higher pay that you deserve. And I am here to help you along the way.
A mountain climber may set out to reach the peak of a high mountain range. He may set his sight on a destination—an elevation he has never achieved, perhaps one that no one has ever achieved. He trains, plans his journey, obtains his supplies, sets out along the trail. Along the way, he endures significant challenges and setbacks, perhaps facing extreme conditions, perhaps running into mountain lions, or bears, or even snakes. If he persists and survives, he reaches his goal.
Leadership is not a destination. There is no peak, no summit, because there is always more to learn and because there is no perfect leader. Leadership is about the journey itself. During your climb, you need to pay attention, because there are lessons to be learned along the way. There are things to discover about yourself, your team, your organization, and your world. You need the mindset of a student who is eager to learn about leadership, understanding that you will never know it all. Each leadership experience, each assent up the mountain, is an opportunity to learn something new, an insight about yourself that will make you a better climber, an observation that will help you mentor an aspiring leader on his or her first climb. Effective leaders are lifelong learners.
1.2 The Geek Leadership Challenge
Ladies and gentlemen, the stakes in IT have never been higher, and the higher the stakes, the more critical solid leadership becomes. Please forgive me for being dramatic, but I feel as though the IT profession is under a curse. I am reminded of a man in the Bible’s Old Testament named Amos, who was not professionally trained to be a prophet but became one, just as many geeks are not professionally trained to be leaders but are put in leadership positions. Amos predicted dark days for ancient Israel, saying, “In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—only to meet a bear. Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—and he’s bitten by a snake” (Amos 5:19).
In the United States, President Obama’s healthcare.gov rollout is infamous for its technical glitches and delays. New York City’s payroll modernization project was cancelled after costs grew from $63 million to $700 million. The state of Texas’s seven-year, $863-million outsourcing contract with IBM was plagued by problems (Newcombe, 2014). In Britain, the BBC’s leadership was severely criticized for the failure of a 100-million-pound ($170-million) digital media initiative (Goldsmith, 2014). In Australia, a 2011 Victorian Ombudsman’s report into 10 projects found that each failed to meet expectations and added an additional $1.44 billion in costs (Clarke, 2014). Experts estimate the global cost of IT failure to be $3 trillion annually (Krigsman, 2012).
This is one angry lion that has us on the run, a tremendous problem that will not be solved without leadership. It takes leadership to inject leadership. “Attention to the time and skills required for expert collaboration and coordination is often overlooked,” says Theresa Pardo, director of the Center for Technology in Government at the University of Albany. “You need ‘super’ project managers, who have the skill-sets to ensure all actions are coordinated across multiple boundaries and are sensitive to shifting realities” (Newcombe, 2014).
As we attempt to escape the lion, we run into a bear of a problem. Few geeks have these “super” project management and leadership skill sets. A study of over 100 project managers revealed that the most critical characteristics for effective project managers are leadership by example, vision, technical competence, decisiveness, good communication skills, and good motivation skills (Zimmerer and Yasin, 1998). Yet the majority of IT professionals are not visionary (Lounsbury et al., n.d.).
As two-thirds of IT professionals are introverts, and many introverts prefer working alone and avoiding social contact, effective communication and motivation is challenging if not impossible for these IT professionals (Institute for Management Excellence, 2003).
In the IT industry, one can be promoted into a leadership position without ever attending college or obtaining leadership training and experience. These promotions are based on skills gained on the job and credentials obtained through technical certification. With the high costs of developing and deploying technology and the ever-increasing rate of technological change, the world needs capable IT leaders to drive solution development and delivery. The industry needs to be able to lean on our technologists without fear of being bitten by a snake. We must instill confidence in our geek leaders.
Coaching front-line leaders, many of whom have never obtained leadership training, enables organizations to build leaders from the bottom up. These field commanders are in a position to aid the organization’s top leadership to develop and articulate the vision for success. They work at ground level to motivate technologists to take the actions required for technology projects to succeed. This book provides tools to address this leadership void in the IT industry.
In Chapter 2, Why Geek Leadership is Different, we examine the definition of a leader and the challenges geeks face in leadership roles. We explore the Information Technology industry, taking a look at failed IT projects. We expound on the leadership potential that is intrinsic to geek leaders. In order to increase the success rate of IT projects, geeks need to understand their intrinsic power and utilize it to lead projects and organizations. This chapter concludes with a Leadership Assessment Questionnaire that can help you analyze and understand your leadership strengths and weaknesses.
This leads to Emotionally Intelligent Communications, which is discussed in Chapter 3. Good communication skills are essential to effective leadership. Helping geek leaders to communicate with emotional intelligence enables them to connect with their team members, their management, and their customers. In this chapter, I introduce the “Missed Signals” use case, which is based on a couple of actual events. Then, we describe three building blocks: (1) emotional intelligence, (2) the Communications Cycle, and (3) the basics of reading body language. These three building blocks are then combined to describe the process of communicating with emotional intelligence. The chapter concludes with an Implementation Checklist designed to assist the geek leader to become a more effective communicator.
Emotionally intelligent communications require the geek leader to know himself or herself. Chapter 4, Self-Leadership, begins with a use case that describes a challenging self-leadership situation. I then provide tools to help the geek leader discover himself or herself and to define the type of leader he or she would like to be. Then I explain how geek leaders can “rewrite their code” and take incremental steps to become the leaders they need and desire to be over time. At the end of this chapter, you will find a checklist that can help you take a proactive approach to improving your self-leadership.
Followers must accept being led. In Chapter 5, Followership, I present a use case describing a situation in which a geek leader has trouble obtaining support from her followers. I describe what it means to be an effective follower and the relationship between effective leadership and effective followership. We will discuss the leader’s responsibility for resolving conflicts among followers and for creating synergistic solutions. I introduce a technique I call “Reverse Micromanagement,” which I have effectively employed on several occasions to ensure that my leadership has the information they need to make decisions and up-channel status. The chapter concludes with a Followership Assessment to help you analyze how well your team members engage in followership.
A geek leader without personal credibility will be frustrated and ineffective. In Chapter 6, Personal Credibility, we discuss the importance of being an organized leader. We discuss the meaning of acting in a proactive manner. I will introduce techniques for prioritizing initiatives. We discuss keeping commitments, as an essential element of leadership is accountability—accountable geek leaders prevent IT project failures. Putting these principles into action produces a geek leader with a good reputation and substantial influence, which we will explore. We will conclude with an Implementation Checklist the geek leader can use to increase his or her personal credibility.
In Chapter 7, Project Leadership Systems Integration, we bring it all to-gether with an overview of the CompTIA Project+ project management life cycle and product life cycles. Systems integration in this context means integrating IT leadership into the project management life cycle. I will introduce the Leadership Integration Plan, which provides guidance for defining, implementing, and assessing leadership within the context of the CompTIA Project+ project management life cycle. This chapter concludes with a Leadership Integration Plan template.
In Chapter 8, Closeout, we finish our examination of geek project leadership with a business fable about a CEO facing the challenge of injecting leadership into the project management practices within his company. We will explore three established and pertinent leadership models: the Exemplary Leadership Model, the Team Leadership Model, and the Situational Leadership Model. Each provides leadership concepts that can aid the geek leader in overcoming leadership challenges.
This book provides geek leaders with resources to assist them to continually improve their leadership abilities. My goal is to provide information to help geeks in leadership roles better understand leadership and become better leaders. This information can help geeks aspiring to advance their careers into management and earn more money and prestige. As presented in the overview, this book is designed to coach IT professionals in leadership positions on how to lead their teams within the context of being a leader in their organization. After you complete this book, you will be able to overcome leadership challenges with emotionally intelligent communication.
I am confident that this book will help geeks become better, more effective leaders, embodying the leadership characteristics described earlier that have made others successful leaders. This book can also help non-geeks better understand geeks, IT projects, and the impact of leadership on the success of IT projects. The management instruments at the end of Chapters 2 through 7 can help you put what you have learned into practice.
The information I provide in this book will help geeks progress in their careers by being aware of leadership expectations and adapting their styles accordingly. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Now, let’s continue with Chapter 2, Why Geek Leadership Is Different.