The context of this blogpost is captured here. In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at: https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/
[Anuj] I am not a huge fan of educational qualifications as a criterion for entry into management roles, so I won’t answer this question citing any degrees or certification. More often I have seen degrees and certifications to be self-limiting than really empowering.
You may be the best individual contributor but that’s no guarantee that you would make a good manager. Most organizations make the mistake of promoting best individual contributors to managers. This doesn’t always work because a job of manager requires more skills than the mastery over functional skills. So what skills should testers, test leads should look to educate themselves on before picking management roles:
1. Empathy (Can I anticipate/feel the pain of my employees ?)
2. Conflict management (Can I turn around dysfunctional team/members?)
3. How to be a role model (Do my team look up to me?)
4. Bigger picture thinking (Can I translate organization’s vision into the goals that my team get excited about?)
5. How to effectively represent your team to upward management (Do upper management see my team as being effective and making impactful contributions?)
6. Executive maturity (Do I know informal channels within the organization to get the work done?)
7. Having a presence in the organization (Do the people in the organization know me and what I do?)
8. Performance management (Do employees perceive me as being fair in my approach?)
9. Being a sponge (Do I absorb pressure or excessively put the pressure on the team?)
Q) What education should the testers, test leads equip themselves with prior to getting into management roles?
[Anuj] I am not a huge fan of educational qualifications as a criterion for entry into management roles, so I won’t answer this question citing any degrees or certification. More often I have seen degrees and certifications to be self-limiting than really empowering.
You may be the best individual contributor but that’s no guarantee that you would make a good manager. Most organizations make the mistake of promoting best individual contributors to managers. This doesn’t always work because a job of manager requires more skills than the mastery over functional skills. So what skills should testers, test leads should look to educate themselves on before picking management roles:
1. Empathy (Can I anticipate/feel the pain of my employees ?)
2. Conflict management (Can I turn around dysfunctional team/members?)
3. How to be a role model (Do my team look up to me?)
4. Bigger picture thinking (Can I translate organization’s vision into the goals that my team get excited about?)
5. How to effectively represent your team to upward management (Do upper management see my team as being effective and making impactful contributions?)
6. Executive maturity (Do I know informal channels within the organization to get the work done?)
7. Having a presence in the organization (Do the people in the organization know me and what I do?)
8. Performance management (Do employees perceive me as being fair in my approach?)
9. Being a sponge (Do I absorb pressure or excessively put the pressure on the team?)
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