Why does it matter? Part 2: All leadership is local.
(If you are just tuning in, you might want to take a glance at Part 1 to catch up.)
Heady stuff. Do you, um, have anything a little more about, you know, me?
Why yes, I do.
Understanding how to be an effective leader is good for your career. The stuff we’ll talk about in the coming months (and the stuff I talk at length about in the book) will help you develop your own personal ability to lead, which might matter to you in two ways.
First let’s talk about a subject likely near and dear to your heart: money. Assuming that you aren’t developing new technology for the Peace Corps (but good for you if you are), you are most likely working at least in part to support yourself and your family and buy a nice thing every once in a while. In our (western) society “success” usually means “financial success”, and even if you don’t subscribe to this fully, it is a pretty handy way to measure your contribution. Developing the leadership skills we’re going to be talking about can hit your wallet/purse/man bag in two obvious ways: it can get you into management faster if you want to go that way, or it can add a secret weapon to your Ninja Worker arsenal if you decide to stay in the trenches.
Pursuing a management track isn’t for everyone, but if it’s for you, mastering leadership skills is one of the fastest ways to promotion. If management isn’t for you and you want to spend your career “doing” then being able to lead and to write, speak, and manage your career effectively will set you apart and make you tremendously valuable relative to your peers. As a person who builds teams I cannot tell you how much I value—and how rare it is to find—people who can see the big picture and know the part they play in it.
Mastering leadership skills will improve your execution and your versatility. Improving execution and versatility increases your value relative to your peers. And increased value means increased compensation.
I said something about two ways that this should matter to you personally; money was the first. The second is impact.
I’m definitely getting older. It’s harder to lose weight, my kids are heading to school, and I have two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one for driving. I’ve also started to think about what I’m doing with my time.
The beginning of my career was about keeping score: getting promotions and increasing my exposure up the chain of command. At some point a few years ago I started to realize that I was worrying more and more about knowing why I was doing a particular thing, and whether doing some other particular thing might be better. In short, I started to worry about doing things that matter more and less about doing things that pay more.
It is frighteningly easy to clock in every morning for 45 years, collect promotions and bonuses, and retire without ever having stopped to think about why you bother. At some point, and I hope it’s sooner rather than later, at least some of you will ask yourselves “Why?” and the answer will lead you in some new direction. Maybe you won’t retool your career completely, but you’ll start to make adjustments and start to want to do or make things that matter to someone. Maybe what matters to you will be having better documentation for users of your widget. Maybe what will matter is making technology to help people live longer. Whatever it is, you’ll want to make a difference. When that time comes you’ll need to be a leader more than an expert. You’ll need to be able to articulate why what you are doing is important, why other people should care, and get them to make your cause their own, or at least to stay out of your way.
Developing leadership skills now is an insurance policy for the future. Whether you want to make money, own a company, write better code, titrate more bases, or make a difference, you’ll have to be a leader first.
