how can you move from being an individual contributor to being a manager in a company what shifts do you need to make so you can build your capability and visibility to be considered for a management position in the future for those of you who are more junior or who are more ambitious in their career you might have asked yourself these questions you might have even watched this video up here but thought it was too advanced or too Irrelevant for your particular situation so I've created this video for you for people who are not yet get in a management position but who desire to be in a management position one day you're going to learn the exact shifts that you need to make to advance into a management role and at the end of the video I'm going to share a really important book recommendation for you to help you learn and grow even further it's really important that we start by looking at the difference between an individual contributor and a manager because when you understand the differences between these two things you become more knowledgeable and you know exactly what shifts you need to make so an individual contributor is someone who has about 1 to three years of experience someone who is in a pre-management position in a company your job is very task specific you are focused on your job only your focus doesn't really go beyond learning the tasks that you need to do for your job and learning how to do them really well examples of someone who is an individual contributor would be a graduate accountant a first second or third year associate in a law firm or a programmer with 1 to 3 years of experience sometimes people with more than 3 years experience can be at the individual contributor level partly because they enjoy their job and they have no desire to move up to a management position and that is totally fine other times it's because they do have the desire but they haven't had the chance or the opportunity to move up to that position that they want they haven't been recognized as a manager or as a leader so that they can move up to that position in the future and it's that group of people who this video is really for now let's look at what a manager is so this is somebody who has developed a high level of experience and expertise pertaining to a specific area and you're in charge of a team or in charge of a group of people in this situation your focus is much broader than that of an individual contributor your focus is on managing people it's on assigning tasks to people helping them complete those tasks and helping them to learn and to grow skills that are important here are delegation giving and receiving feedback running meetings time management evaluating people's progress towards the goals that you have set and let's not forget people's skills which are really at the core of you being able to do all of this really well now if you are already in a management position and you want to move up to a leadership or executive role then this video up here is more advanced and I go into details about how you can do that but the rest of of this particular video will be for people who are currently at an individual contributor level and want to move up to a management level you will learn a lot of the strategies that you need to implement and put in place to help you do that and the first thing you need to do is to shift your focus from task level to managing people a lot of the reason people can't move up to a management position is because they're stuck at task level thinking and task level activities so you need to find a way to expand your yourself to expand your thinking and behave like a manager would I recommend that you start by looking at the duties you currently perform at work how many of those activities are task specific this will help you to understand how much of your time and energy is put towards task specific activities which as you've already learned in this video is related to being an individual contributor but not helpful when you want to go for a management position get to know your strengths and weaknesses this is important so you can know where you are now and so you can get an idea of whether you already have certain strengths that are helpful or important in a management role to get to know your strengths you can use the Clifton strength assessment this is a paid assessment otherwise you can use the high five test which is a free assessment but it will give you the top five strengths that you have I'll put links to both of those in the description below I am not an affiliate of either of those assessments I don't earn any money or commission if you go ahead and purchase one of them once you've looked at the duties you perform and once you've looked at your strengths then you can look at how you can expand yourself to learn and demonstrate your ability to manage people you already know some skills that are important as a manager I shared them with you a moment ago in this video now you need to think about how can you learn and demonstrate those skills and how can you start to think and behave more like a manager and not like an individual contributor and if you're not sure of what is required of you in a management role then you might need to have conversations with people who are currently in a management role you could ask your own manager if you have that level of trust with them or you could ask another manager in the same company or in a different company talk to them and ask what does it take to succeed in that role what skills would someone need to develop what challenges did they come against in the beginning these kinds of conversations are really important for you to have so you can understand the skills that you need to develop or improve on plus word is very likely to get around that you are interested in becoming a manager one day and those people you have those conversations with might be able to recommend you for a management position or they may themselves be involved in future hiring decisions as well all of these things will get you one step closer to the position that you want after having these conversations with other managers you ideally walk away with a list of skills that you need to learn and develop it's really important that this list of skills is very specific so rather than being vague and saying I need to learn how to delegate you should be a lot more specific and say something like I need to learn what to say when I delegate and I need to learn how to follow up and monitor people's progress this is a lot more specific then just I need to learn how to delegate so if in the conversations you had with other managers and leaders you came up with a list of skills that were too broad then you need to think about how to make them more focused how to make them more specific and you can ask yourself questions like this what specific skills do you need to develop when it comes to delegation giving and receiving feedback conducting meetings communication people skills organizing timelines and schedules tracking progress towards goals and once once you have a very specific list of skills that you need to learn then you need to go out and learn them and you can do this by enrolling in training by requesting to your company if they can provide training for you you can learn yourself through books through podcasts through YouTube videos as well this is non-negotiable because managers aren't born with these skills they develop them and they learn them through the methods that I just shared with you and then once they have developed and learned them they use them in their job and they start to refine and improve them over time you're probably asking yourself at this point in the video how can you demonstrate management skills if you're not yet a manager how can you delegate or how can you run a meeting if you're not yet a manager so I'm going to share with you some ways that you can start to demonstrate these important management skills while you are still an individual contributor one set of skills that I haven't yet mentioned in this video is collaboration and camaraderie and for you as an individual contributor if you want to start to build and start to demonstrate that you have skills in this area then you can do this with your co-workers start to build really strong social relationships with your co-workers start to build trust with them encourage them to build relationships with one another as well over time this will help your manager to see that you're somebody with good people skills you can also offer to begin your next team meeting or to lead a portion of that meeting this will show you're a manager that you have the ability and the confidence as well to conduct meetings on team projects volunteer to be the leader of that team project so you can get experience in managing and leading a group of people part of this process of demonstrating your management ability will be propelled if you start to support and guide Junior colleagues the reason you're probably looking at a management position is because you already have a high level of expertise or skill in a particular area area you can leverage this high level of skill or expertise and use it to guide and support people who are more junior or less experienced in your team look for people who are struggling with tasks and Coach them to completion monitor their progress and keep your manager updated as well as to their progress learning this new skill request your manager to get a junior person on board and involved in a project that you're working on say that you would like help completing this task ask and you would like practice in training up a more Junior employee and when requesting this to your manager use the selling point that it's going to benefit the whole team because if this particular person is higher skilled or more experienced then it's going to benefit the whole team in the end it's really about showing initiative in the right areas and by wanting to help and to guide more Junior employes help them to learn and grow you are definitely showing your management ability my last piece of advice is in my opinion the most important piece of advice in this video because I know that many of you are probably guilty of it and that is keeping your head down at work or rather you shouldn't keep your head down at work meaning you shouldn't put all of your focus on doing a great job and forget about networking about building relationships with your co-workers or other bosses in your team you shouldn't forget about building visibility or helping people see how credible and competent you are if you don't spend time doing all of these things then this is definitely going to work against you when you go for a management position because the reality is in many workplaces people who want to remain invisible rarely get promoted if nobody knows who you are what you do what you're capable of what you contribute what you're good at then how can anyone ever think that you are capable of a management position so it's in your best interest to build visibility in the office and this video up here will help you do just that now for some book recommendations that I mentioned at the beginning of this video so the first recommendation is the book Jack by Jack Welch so this is an autobiography that he has written himself about his career progression when he was working for General Electric so he shares a lot of strategies and tips as to what made him successful in his career and my opinion is that if it helped him progress in his career then it can definitely help you too so this is the first book the second book is the first time manager by Jim mccomic this book will help you if you've been promoted into a management position based on your technical skills and you need to build the other skills in order to be successful as a manager and the last book recommendation is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie this is a very helpful book that will teach you the people skills that you need in order to manage and Lead well I'll put links to all of those books in the description below check out the video I mentioned before on the screen about how to not be invisible at work thank you so much for watching this video if you did like it please hit the like button and subscribe to my channel as well and I will see you next week in another video