"Tech is easy, people are hard"
"Tech is easy, people are hard".
That summarizes an important challenge for many tech professionals, and it's especially applicable to tech managers.
The problem occurs because we try to play chess using the rules of checkers. You see every idea has an intrinsic value which means how inherently great the idea is. But it also has an apparent value, which means how great the idea sounds.
Like it or not, people make a "buying decision" based on that apparent value. For example: when you go to a book store, you sample the book before buying it. You don't read through the whole book there.
So you're judging a book by its cover in a literal sense, at least before the purchase.
Puns aside, that's the reason why you often find technically incompetent but smooth-talking and politically savvy professionals in positions of power.
But if there's one thing I've learned in the process of building my own business so far, it is:
"Don't hate the rules of the game if you're not winning. Learn to play it better"
So looking at it objectively, what are some things these people are doing? Well consciously or unconsciously, they realize that humans are not creatures of logic. We are emotional beings that rationalize.
Now for most people who've been in the tech industry for 10+ years, it's understandable that logic becomes their fundamental way of communicating. But the fallacy here is that they focus only on the logic and totally miss out on calibrating their message in the language of humans.
And that's why hardcore techies don't go out to sell their products. Instead, some salesperson with some superficial understanding goes out and does the talking.
Now, teaching tech managers to sell is way easier than teaching salespeople to write code. Thus, I disagree with the title I chose for this article.
To bring back the point I made above about playing by the wrong rules --> The consequence is that many tech leaders although delivering the most amazing results often remain stuck in the same position.
At a higher level, they struggle to get their point across effectively. Their ideas are not taken very seriously and are often shut down by some cocky or more aggressive person in the room.
Because of this, at a deeper level, many tech leaders are:
And I can understand that. It is frustrating. Being stuck in the same role for several years one of my clients asked me, "But Varun, I am doing everything right. I don't know why I'm not growing."
And my honest answer was: "Yes, you are doing everything right. But you're not doing everything."
If there's one skill that makes it or breaks it in your leadership career, it's how you deal with people. Just think about it: Any vision of yours that must be realized by other people must be communicated to them.
Sure, you can have absolutely terrible communication and may still succeed as an individual contributor. But how effectively you lead is determined by how effectively you communicate.
领英推荐
But here's a thing: Communication is something so fundamental that we hardly ever pay close attention to it. We develop our communication style early on in our lives and it's shaped by our environment, subconscious conditioning, and biases. And then we develop a strong identification with this style and label it as a part of our personality.
Not really realizing that we have conscious control over our communication. If you have ever been in a company of highly successful people, you'd realize that they have a different language. They make you feel calm and certain. They talk in terms of solutions, not just problems, and don't waste their time on gossip and politics. But also observe what's going on under the surface. They're using the same language for themselves too. The voice in their head talks to them in the same language.
The point is that when you work on something so fundamental as your communication, you start changing the way you interact with yourself and the world. This fundamental change is not incremental in nature. So to speak you didn't just add something to the input to get an incremental change in the output. This is a paradigm shift, a transformation. You're changing the very process itself.
Most people don't realize what's really possible. Are you truly living up to your full potential? Have you really achieved what you're really capable of? The ambition you had when you were a child and nobody had conditioned you to limit your dreams?
Or are you saying "I'm happy where I'm at" to make a safe choice? "I'm growing at an average pace as everyone I know..."
Honestly, since when did that???? become your metric?
Take a moment to think how things will change if you had an amazing amount of social capital in your org, and network across the industry, you're a walking negotiator. If you stand out in the room, people listen to you, they look up to you for direction? Your ideas see through the execution, and you are recognized in your org up to the highest level of leadership. Heck, you become the highest level.
But god forbid if someone seeks out solutions. Google "How to improve communication" or "How to grow in your career as a leader". See the images below to see the watered-down mainstream BS that dominates the top 10 pages of google.
The problem with this kind of advice is that it's just nice, not practical. And it's not tailored to you. It's written by some "extrovert" who read a few self-help books. It's not practical because it's just some wishful thinking about how things should ideally be.
And there's a shortage of some quality content and some really tailored advice. Honestly, for me, influence and charisma are learned skills. Back in 2017, I started going out to meet with random strangers in any location possible. I would fly into random cities, and meet with a heck ton of people.
My goal was to get a better social and dating life. The thought of coaching professionals was not even close in my head. I randomly started helping friends and people I'd find online that had similar issues of confidence and charisma.
When I quit my job last year to pursue coaching people full time, I realized how much this professional coaching space is filled with feel-good and academic jargon hypothesized by self-proclaimed experts (I know I'm being ironic here).
My mission with my business is simple:
And so I am starting a multi-part series in this newsletter. Stay tuned for the next one where I deconstruct the 4 key skill sets that every leader needs to succeed with people. And how exactly you can master it.
... to be continued
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you like this newsletter, then I want to make a simple deal with you ????
I promise to bring to you No-BS practical advice. Please consider liking and commenting on the post as that helps me reach a broader audience. It really helps.
-Varun