4 Ways To Have A Better IT Manager Career

Successful IT managers have to find ways to deal with stress
Successful IT managers have to find ways to deal with stress
Image Credit

Image Credit

Hmm, so now that you are an IT manager, what’s the next step? Will you become CIO some day? Perhaps, however, this is not going to happen if you don’t take the time to properly manage your career by developing the IT manager skills that you’re going to need. I’m pretty sure that we all want to manage our careers, but exactly how to go about doing that is where things seem to get a bit hazy…

4 Self-Management Skills That Every IT Manager Must Have

In order to become a better IT manager, you have to become a better person first. This has a great deal to do with you taking the time to look at yourself and determine what kind of IT manager training you need in order to change and improve. The fancy term for all of this is “self-management”. Here are four areas that you need to inspect closely in order to determine if you can become better:

  • Stress Management: It’s easy to get caught up in what’s going on in the office each day. No, everything does not always go our way and that can lead to stress – a lot of it. You’ll burn out if you are not careful. Being aware of your stress level and then finding ways to deal with it are key self-management skills that we all need. Sorry, stress is always going to be a part of your IT manager job! – learn to deal with it!
  • Limit Setting and Goal Setting: In order to be an effective IT manager you need to be able to set realistic goals for your team. Likewise, you need to have the ability to set limits for your team – how much is too much, how much is too little? Get good at this and it will help with your IT team building because now everyone on your team will feel as though they know what they need to do and how it will be measured.
  • Using Power and Authority Positivity: As an IT manager, your company has given you the power (so to speak) to control what your team works on. Sure, power is great, but it’s how you go about using it that really matters in the end. Take a look at how you are making use of what has been given to you and determine if you need to make changes.
  • Seeing Multiple Perspectives: How you see the world is based on your set of personal experiences. However, you may be missing things. What this means is that in order to become an effective IT manager, you need to take the time to look at things from more than just your normal perspective. Get good at doing this and you’ll become a better decision maker.

What All Of This Means For You

In order to have a successful IT manager career, you need to take action in order to be constantly improving how you manage yourself. As easy as this may sound, it turns out that it’s actually quite difficult to identify where to start.

In order to become better, an IT manager needs to work at 4 self-management skills. These include Stress Management, Limit Setting and Goal Setting, Using Power and Authority Positivity, and Seeing Multiple Perspectives.

It can be all too easy for an IT manager to become focused on the technology that we use to solve problems or issues that have come up within his or her team. Expand your thinking and take care of developing the self-management skills that you’ll need in order to take your career to the next level.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What is the best way to get feedback on how your team views your use of power?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Have you ever given any thought to what it takes to be a really good IT manager? I mean sure, you got the job, but let’s take a step back for just a moment. Assuming that your company wasn’t just trying to fill an open position and you just happened to be available, what are the business IT manager skills that are needed in order to be an effective IT manager?