Developing leadership skills and improving social skills can go a long way in achieving career success, especially in mid-career.
Here at Lansky Career Consultants, clients often ask how they can become more successful or move up in their company. They often assume that they would need to further hone their technical skills. Or perhaps learn more advanced accounting skills or master a new programming language.
Of course, those are helpful skills. However, in a recent Wall Street Journal article on “The Secret to Midcareer Success” by Michael S. Malone, two successful businessmen suggest that beyond one’s highly developed technical skills — necessary of course — there is another set of aptitudes that often separate the competent worker bees from those that rise higher in the company.
In the article, Anil Singhal, co-founder of Net Scout, which helps companies and government agencies manage their IT networks, says that the skills you learned in college and in the first ten years of professional work can create a certain level of success, but “secondary skills” — social qualities, such as the ability to interact well with colleagues — become key to further growth. In other words, it is necessary to develop the ability to lead.
John Hennessey, Silicon Valley icon, is writing a book on leadership. He agrees that in order to advance to a leadership role, social skills become more important than technical skills. Start to cultivate leadership skills in early mid-career, often growing them on some previous liberal arts courses. Learn to ask questions instead of doing all the research yourself.
A mediocre technologist who is willing to learn can become a great corporate executive, whereas a superstar scientist may not be a good boss (and some of my clients have told me that they do not enjoy it either). Supporting subordinates and enrolling them in a unified vision for the future are critical tasks for leaders.
Hennessey and Singhal would both agree that tasks like coding and accounting add value, whereas communication and leadership are multiplicative and make the whole team more valuable.
