For a better working life

Here are a few current musings from the world of RapportTech where we aim to help engineers, managers and leaders create better working lives in every sense.

Connections

It's easy to create connections on LinkedIn and it can feel good to have a steady stream of new people join your following. These aren't real connections though until you actually make a personal effort to start a conversation and find some common ground. I'm a big fan of messaging or even picking up the phone and finding out how I might be able to help when someone has made the effort to download my Guide to the Engineer to Manager transition or made a comment on one of my posts. I encourage you to do the same and my experience is that people are generally surprised but pleased you did.

Three rules:

1. Do it quickly as people get distracted faster than ever
2. Always be helping - not selling
3. Don't expect anything in return. It will come. It is a numbers game and the highest value connections can come from the most surprising places. You are just amplifying the chance of a useful connection happening by many, many times. You are taking the initiative and very few people do that on LinkedIn.

Leadership Models

I'm getting tired of the number of unrealistic models of leadership and comparisons of leadership and management being posted on LinkedIn. Some of the posts are downright unhelpful and set unobtainable standards of what a great leader should look like and completely miss the real difference between management and leadership. This led to the following post:

Do you ever think there's something slightly suspect and unworkable in the many models of leadership that circulate?

Here's a different 4 box framework on Leadership which reflects much more the reality of leadership.

If I had to simplify it down to 4 key principles of good leadership I'd say:

1. Develop a strategic mindset appropriate for your organisation

2. Set and communicate change in an appropriate timescale

3. Be consistent

4. Be straightforward to deal with

Any other positive traits are a nice bonus but I've never met a leader that fits any of the models that do the rounds. You can look at any supposedly 'great leader' and see that they are as flawed as any human being but there was a time where they happened to have the strategic mindset that was appropriate for the time. And then they didn't...

What would be your top 4 principles for the basis of good leadership? What would be on your shortlist of Leadership Principles?

#leadership

Top posts

I'm a prolific poster on LinkedIn and having the engineer/scientist background that I do I like to keep track of what posts have engaged the most people.

Here's my recent top 3 and a big thanks to the guys at 'The Woke Salaryman' for creating and making some great content and making it available. All these posts are available in the Engineer to Manager group and have usually been posted in other groups as well.

1. Is it OK if I don't become a manager? This was probably my first viral post. I put it in one large engineering group and it's had close to 2 million impressions and over 1,300 reposts!
2. Why young talented people are leaving. Another one that has also been widely reposted.
3. Why don't I get promoted. An important post for all engineers that are being rebuffed from their first management posts.

For more

• Get the free guide to the Engineer-to-Manager transition. 46 pages of important guidance, checklists and much more. Now in version 2.1 and already downloaded by thousands.
• See my Field Notes. Very short videos on the subject of management development, coaching and mentoring.
• Find out more about the innovative Engineer to Management programme.
• If you think I can help you with something then stop by for a chat over zoom. Check my calendar and book a call here.