As a senior manager…
You may have landed in your role because you are excellent at what you do technically. An excellent IT architect, solution designer, project manager, program manager, salesperson, manager, researcher, marketer – you are known for those technical skills, for being able to roll up your sleeves and doing it.
Moving up the ladder of responsibility requires you to learn to let go of your ability to ‘do’ those things you have been known for and start to act like a conductor and orchestrate your team and those around to achieve the business outcomes you are tasked with.
Tips to move from a ‘Doer’ to a ‘Thinker’
Each day as issues, topics and the like come up, before acting on them, ask yourself these questions:
- Is this a job for me?
- Can someone else in the team do this?
- How can I enable a team member to take this on, do a great job and report back on progress?
Then as you learn to let go of your desire to ‘do’ start to look at issues and topics that come up and think about how they fit with the broader organisational goals. Is there a way you could seed ideas, bring about change, work with other leaders to have your teams create a way-forward? Questions to ask yourself are:
- Where/how else does this fit in the organisation?
- What is the outcome we are looking to achieve? And does it fit with our strategic plan?
- What can I do to influence action?
- How can I be involved as a reviewer/approver?
