Few indicators to build leadership quality in yourself

In my continued learning experience through IT sector, I came across many people like Founders, Directors, CEOs, CTOs, COOs, Engineers, Technical Writers, Project Managers, DBAs, System Administrators, Test Engineers and lots of other people playing different roles. I observed that each layer has a different leadership skill than the others.

You might say that what's new in this? That's the layer or level is meant for the kind of people they are. Yes, you are correct. But, think once that how did they reach to that level? Well, answer is simple. Experience.You are correct. The word "experience" means a lot and I was always after the findings of the right way to have the "experience".

When I started as a software engineer, I faced a frustration within the group. Everyone thinks that he/she is doing the best out of them, but the organization overlooks the effort that they put at their work. They keep looping back into few points those are very common:

• Non-satisfactory package, and
• Delayed promotion

These were quite easy for me to adopt and somehow I adopted these to some extent, and I changed my first job after one and half years when I found that people joined after me got promoted to a lead role and I was doing the same what I have been doing since joined. Yes, I was very upset. Joined another organization and after one year, same thing happened to me. Again, I was in a mood to change this job too. But, this time I started thinking how many jobs will I change to have the continued frustration. So, let's face it.

Well, this leads a better and constructive thinking in my mind. I started analyzing the reason behind. As a result, I found that leadership quality was missing in me. I started looking at the top personalities in the IT sector and reading their blogs, observed their style of writings and experiences that how they achieved the success. My findings always pointed me towards their leadership quality. I got few indicators from them which I like to share here:

Presenting to the mass

With the permission of my manager, I started conducting seminars. I took a topic for a month and let everybody know that I will be talking on that topic. As I have started my career, I didn't know what to talk about. In other hand, I didn't want to waste anybody's time too. So, I took a route that could help my manager and the rest of the group in the organization. I used to choose a topic through which I could explain how I or my other team member fixed an issue and what are our findings while we fixed the issue. I always encouraged other team member to talk about the same. When I didn't have such thing for a month, I used to talk to other groups and see what they were working and the challenges that they were facing. As I didn't know much about their task, I initiated the topic and engage the team to talk about it more. This actually helped to build few things in me:

• Removed the hesitation to speak
• Built better presentation skill
• Built assertiveness to know more about the other team member
• Manage time while talking to the mass
• A team player
• Most importantly, a way to inform the challenges faced and how to fix those for betterment for other team members

Helping other team members

As soon as I started finding that I should know that what my other colleagues are doing, I started feeling a new responsibility to know and help them resolving their challenges. I knew that everyone was busy and didn't have time to explain me everything. So, I started observing their work, conversations within them after I finished mine. Obviously, it was not possible for me everyday as I had to finish my tasks. But, when I used to get an opportunity, I used to talk to my colleagues to know about their project details, business logic, how did they approach and what are the challenges were they facing. In the discussion, with my little exposure and experience, tried to help them to resolve any challenges they were facing. This helped me improving the following:

• Better relationship with my colleagues
• Better team player
• Learn new things apart from the tasks assigned to me. Don't we search for this thing in our career and keep waiting that when we would get a chance? So, don't wait, grab it.

Ownership towards organization

With the above practices in place, I started feeling that I feel for the organization and anyone's challenge is my problem and always ready to help to resolve them. I always helped (still helping) others to complete tasks within time line (this is the key to keep an organization profitable) apart from my tasks. Yes, in order to do this, I had to spend extra hours at work or at home to read and research towards the resolutions. This helped me improving the following:

• Think about profitability of the organization (if your organization earns profit, you will have your part in form of increment or whatever way your organization decides to share)
• Always ready to help others
• People start listening to me
• Add values in the discussion

These are few indicators that helped me a lot to improve and have a leadership role in my career. I hope that this post will help someone to find a way to eliminate such frustration that I have mentioned above. I would also appreciate to have comments in addition to the above in order to help others in a better way.

Thank you!