From professional to leader: Not a journey for just anyone
Most people become managers after succeeding as professionals, but far too few also succeed as managers. That's why leadership training at work is particularly important for the professional to become a successful manager - both for the company and the employees.
People who are good at their profession and have worked for a few years are often promoted to management. No one knows their profession better than them, and they have strong ties to their workplace. These are great qualities, but what many people don't realize is that the job content of a manager is significantly different from the job content of a professional. As in the profession, practice makes perfect, and if the professional is to succeed as a manager, leadership training should be an important element of the working day. The qualification requirements for the two roles have significant differences:
Typical requirements for professionals:
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Set and communicate clear goals for yourself
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Have solid professional insight and understanding of the subject
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Able to work efficiently, smart and structured
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Be passionate about the profession and the tasks
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Able to work well with others
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Be able to further develop and challenge yourself
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Focus on the subject and development of own professional competence
Typical manager requirements:
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Set and communicate clear goals to others
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Have sufficient professional insight and a solid overall view
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Able to organize work and get others to work efficiently, smartly and in a structured way
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Be passionate about your employees and their well-being
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Able to get others to work well with each other
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Be able to develop and challenge others
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Have confidence in the professional expertise of others and focus on developing your own leadership skills
The main difference for a professional moving into a leadership role is the focus away from their own performance in the profession and towards the well-being, collaboration and performance of their employees. Often the profession they come from has been something that has taken years to study and specialize in, while leadership is expected to be something that the professional should know intuitively, without having studied or trained in it. Creating results through others is very demanding, and leadership has never been more challenging than it is today. Mastering the requirements of good leadership requires at least as much as becoming a good professional.
Management training is a strategic and concrete tool for increasing productivity in the company. The professional needs professional replenishment in relation to the new subject, management, in addition to concrete exercises and constructive feedback from other managers and employees in a safe, organized setting. This makes him or her better able to carry out what senior management wants and the company needs.
Leadership development is just as much about continuity. Many companies have assembly-based training for managers. The result is often that new knowledge fades quickly and changes do not take place because it is difficult to relate the learning to everyday work. Leadership development should therefore take place over time.
Humans are creatures of habit. Few things are more difficult than changing your own traits, mindset and routines, especially after many successful years as a professional. There is therefore good reason to make the new manager aware of his or her own behavior and help him or her to establish new habits. The new subject, leadership, should be integrated into the working day together with the company's focus areas, in a continuous and structured training that also involves employees around the new manager. Research shows that this combination is particularly effective, and with the right leadership training, the super professional can also achieve fantastic results as a manager.
About the author: Mats Kristensen co-founded FRONT Leadership in 2015 and is now Managing Partner with responsibility for strategic and commercial development, among other things. He has ten years of international experience with change, training and development in companies such as GE, Schneider Electric and Orkla, and has also been a leader in the Norwegian Armed Forces for more than 10 years. He has an education from the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, the Norwegian Military Academy and the Norwegian War College, and holds a Master's degree in management from BI, where he now lectures in competence management and change management at the HR program. He is also network manager for several different professional HR networks in Executive Global Networks, co-author of HRBOKA at Gyldendaland editor-in-chief of the magazine, FRONT Leadership Weekly.
