How do you become a practice lead?

Following my KISS principles: 1. Mutual and Learning Together. 2. Emotionally connecting with Team (at least the immediate reportees). 3. Conflict Management - both evident and open conflicts as well as undisclosed conflicts (#2 helps find the undisclosed ones). 4. Assigning responsibilities and adhering to it ourselves too. 5. Providing a hearing ear to the team when required 6. Caring for the team and grooming them to the right thoughts/directions. Talking out wrong decisions of self/others, and learning is helpful. 7. Ensuring the Practice makes Profits. 8. Appreciate Timely- Rewards Sometimes point 8 can cause stress to the entire team in small/large ways. Remaining United, Open and Transparent to the right levels cannot be compromised.

1. Keep communication open and information flowing. Foster widespread problem-solving dialogue. Face issues openly and honestly. 2. Emphasize personal responsibility. Ask each staff member to take responsibility for their part of a problem. 3. Demonstrate respect for talent and achievements at every level. Offer frequent public thanks. Praise those who meet high standards while helping poor performers improve (or weeding them out if they don’t). 4. Convene conversations among departments. Involve multiple departments in problem solving. 5. Stress common purpose. Communicate inspiring goals that transcend any individual or group. 6. Raise Aspirations. Use small wins to show the potential for bigger successes. 7. Reward Initative.

Its important to know what a Practice is, then the role of a Practice Lead can be crafted appropriately. A Practice (team) is a conduit between Sales & Delivery (making everything possible to close a Sales opportunity and hand it over to Delivery. It collectively holds responsibilities of Pre-Sales, Solutioning, Portfolio of service offerings, Skill definition & management, Staffing, Partner Management (at the very least) and more. Sales focused Practice Leads can enhance their tech skills to better qualify the sales opportunity. Solution focused Practice Leads can work with Partners & Product vendors to define winning solutions and proposals. Practice Leads can increase their skills to cover as many areas for a effective Practice Team.

I would say 3 Key areas you would need to focus to become a Practice Lead .1.Grow Your Expertise: Focus on building your skills and knowledge in your chosen field. Stay curious, seek out learning opportunities, and become an authority in your area of expertise.2.Show Leadership Potential: Take the lead on projects, demonstrate initiative, and work collaboratively with others. Showcase your ability to make positive contributions and solve problems effectively.3.Express Interest and Deliver Results: Let your interest in a leadership role be known. Share your aspirations with your superiors, and consistently deliver high-quality results on projects. Your actions will speak volumes about your readiness for a leadership position.

Practice Lead is the person who has sufficient experience to become a reference for the work team due to his long experience and the many practical cases he has experienced, in addition to his ability to deal with large clients and attract more business.

Sometimes, the skills and qualifications matter less than sheer humanitarian approach. But generally speaking, a little bit of everything would help, including and not limited to atleast some of the following: 1. The Core skills of the practice - technical and otherwise 2. People skills - popularity in company, handling conflicts, smooth but genuine talker 3. Authoritative in the context 4. Supporting open-ness, inclusive-ness 5. Basics of Human rights aka read HR underneath 6. Being Trusted by juniors and peers and Seniors too I have personally seen enough times, that the practice head was not the best techie in the practice. Coincidentally I had interviewed one such person, got him onboard and saw him succeed too.

In my point of view, practice leads are the equivalent to football captains (soccer): a go to person. A person that plays well in all the fields. Might not be the best in one position, but is overall excellent. Someone with great softskills: - Leadership - Communication - Problem-solving - Mentor and Coach

A Practice Lead can build any combination of skills from the following sub-categories: 1) Pre-Sales - client discussions, domain knowledge, proposal writing 2) Solutioning - tech skills in crafting a practical and deliverable solution. 3) Skill definition, management & Staffing - what tech / functional skills will be needed, how many are available and balance to train or acquire. 4) Partner Management - identifying which 3P vendors qualify to become partners, understanding their offerings and applying them to the opportunities. Not to dispense that the basic requirements of good communication skills (verbal, written), working in teams, elementary leadership skills, knowledge of industry verticals being targeted et. are a pre-requisite.

As a practice lead, you will be responsible for managing and guiding a team of professionals, so the ability to effectively communicate, delegate tasks, and inspire others is essential. Furthermore, a solid foundation in business skills is vital for overseeing the operations of the practice. While the specific requirements may vary depending on the practice area, obtaining a degree or certification in a relevant field can significantly enhance your credibility and demonstrate your commitment to continuous learning and professional development. These formal qualifications provide a solid theoretical framework and equip you with the necessary knowledge to excel in your role as a practice lead.

Experience is definitely a key. Having managed a comparatively smaller team by keeping track or monitoring helps build the necessary skills to become a practice leader.

Too often practice leads are promoted because of their excellence in a front line position without being given the opportunity to learn the new skills needed for their new role. Promoting excellent team members isn't the problem. Expecting that great work as a team member will lead to great work as a leader is faulty logic, at best. Offer training! If you aspire to leadership, look for training and development opportunities. Development means challenging yourself... not just talking to a mentor. Ask to lead a project. Or to train a new team member. Request responsibility for an area of the practice that the lead is willing to delegate (i.e. supply management). Practice!

A junior profile cannot be practice lead as you need field expertise and industry knowledge. Also to be respected from your peers, you must have some charism and natural leadership skills. Also you must be hardworker as not only you must solve today's problems but must think at tomorrow's problems too. So keeping up-to-date with training and new trends.

Once again there isn't a scientific method for everything. But most often than not, a calibre to jointly win, lead by example, patience, desire and openness to learn from juniors, etc. etc. are important to be traits in us to get to it. Tech skills required can be learnt. Other skills need to be practiced and showcased enough number of times to get to such positions by aspirants. Otherwise for those who are already practice leads, and hoping of better (more) success, honing and improving on these could never go waste.

Knowing what are the focus areas of the Practice can be the first step. Next is to understand the Portfolio of service offerings of the Practice - one will know what clients are being approached and what is offered to them. Finally what sub-category of the Practice are you a part (Pre-Sales, Solutioning, Skills, Partner Management etc.). Knowing others in the same sub-category will provide insights on what more is to be learnt. E.g. Pre-Sales members can enhance their Industry Knowledge to get a global perspective, Solutioning members can enhance their knowledge on newer areas like AI, blockchain etc. to provide better and modern solutions. It would also be effective to plan to cover more sub-categories thereby broadening ones knowledge.

Aspiring leaders MUST complete leadership education. Performance management, coaching, behavioral interviewing, crucial conversations, diversity training...there are so many things a leader must know other than just being a subject matter expert. An experienced, educated, and mentored leader can lead any team. Promotion from within a team without any leader training is a recipe for disaster, and a huge risk for the company. Invest in your leaders, especially new ones!

Most of the time, practice leads are given directions and expected to deliver. There would be restrictions and constraints, due to multiple factors for ex only like - wfh vs office, ethnicity difference, language discomfort, spend limits, multiple egos and many more. But there will always be some space for creativity within these factors. Openness and learning from other's mistakes, readiness to listen, reading varied books, can all help. Including learning from other industries even. While most of these are practically possible, our comfort on the role, causes us to stagnate and miss out on these common sense (the most uncommon sense). The rest is known. What do you think? Please write to me on this please.

Succeeding as a practice lead requires mix and match of skills like domain expertise, strategic thinking, stakeholder management skills, effective communication skills, etc. Exposure to how business runs and what nuances one has to consider while suggesting or proposing ideas and solutions to the clients is a key balance that they need to have. After all there is no one size fits all approach. Amongst these skills they need to find their strengths and weaknesses and play accordingly.

Building strong relationships has been a valuable strategy for me as a practice lead. Over the past few years, I have dedicated time to develop relationships with professionals in my industry. I observed the events they attended, noted the sponsors that contributed to their companies' success, and paid attention to the trainings they pursued. I was intentional about cultivating relationships not only with executives but also with individuals who shared a specific mindset. This focus on relationship-building has enhanced my ability to advocate for my clients at higher levels, adding greater value to the work I do and the success of my clientele.

A Practice has a multitude of skills needed to be effective in its sole objective of enabling deals to be won. Hence to succeed as a Practice Lead, one must: 1) First, be inquisitive and probing to know as much about the clients, their industries, their market presence and why they do what they do. 2) Next, be involved to know what the client requirements are and why they need ? 3) Thereafter, be focused on identifying what is needed to provide a winning proposition - great price, world class solution, manageable timeline, innovative ideas etc. 4) Finally, collaborate with others in the Practice to craft all that is needed to win the deal - mind blowing demos, great presentations to portray your ideas and approach, detailed proposals etc.

You succeed as a practice lead by continuing the same behaviors that led management to assign you the role. In other words, you must continue demonstrating initiative and learning new skills. Ultimately your job as team lead is to guide your direct reports and meet the KPI set forth by management for your department.

Like they say "Experience makes HUMAN Perfect". I am going by that same principle. Trouble with this balancing part is, there is very little of genuine science, instead there is (a lot of) art, tact and smartness needed here. Attempt doing this during informal/group/friends picnic or to a water/adventure park, and some of the nuances could come up quite visibly. Like expected and known, it is not straight-forward and easy. But talking to those with such experiences within our circle, reading, etc. can help get to it. Again, I hope none are expecting to learn/master it overnight. It is a journey that does not have an end. The End could only be defined very loosely.

Need to continually consider more efficient ways to get things done and encourage a culture of change. Often this will involve implementing new systems which you won’t do yourself necessarily but you will be involved in the selection of software and be involved in testing, implementation and embracing the change.

Finding a balance between being a technical expert, a leader, and a manager is indeed a significant challenge for practice leads. It requires a multifaceted approach and specific strategies to excel in all three areas. Here are some key tips to help practice leads navigate this challenge: 1. Continuously develop technical expertise 2. Master leadership skills 3. Embrace strategic management 4. Delegate responsibility

Personally I have been involved in building small (5 member) to large (800+ members) Practice from grounds up, three time in my career spanning 3 decades. And in all these three organizations, the focus of the Practice has been: 1) To cross train all leads in as many competencies to handle multiple opportunities 2) To constantly enhance their knowledge so that they are prepared to address as many unknown questions from clients 3) To make everyone a strong Team Player as the success of the Practice is the collective success of all its members. Lastly, balancing many complex activities in a Practice needs a lot of planning. So being focused on crafting strategies with favorable outcomes can be a good mantra for a Successful Practice.

Throughout my career, I have gained an understanding of the value of employee feedback. I’m talking about a sincere, consistent effort to make your staff’s workplace the best it can be. Ask employees how happy they are at work and what you can do to make them happier. These two questions indicate to your staff that your care about them and that they have your support. Furthermore, these discussions will provide you with a clear understanding of their concerns so you can provide your staff with meaningful direction. By knowing what motivates your staff, you can boost their performance and their satisfaction at work. These discussions also serve a purpose by allowing you to proactively head off issues before they become larger problems.

This an example of true leadership!! CEOs should follow this example, especially private equity which often ignores employees