So you want to be a leader… #1

What does it take to be a leader?

Published in

Coach Jose — Leadership and Project Management

4 min readAug 28, 2024

You have been very successful as an individual contributor (IC) in your organization. People value your expertise in how things get done. Because of this success, you’ve been asked to take over your team as their lead. Not a big team, 5 people all doing work similar to you in your office.

You’ve heard, though, that your skills as an IC are not the same as the skills you’ll need as a leader. What does this mean? What skills do you need? Isn’t it enough for you to show them how you do the work and let them do it?

Do YOU want to be a leader?

Well, there’s more to it than showing them what to do. However, there’s a question you need to ask yourself before we get into what it takes to be a leader. It is “do you want to be a leader?”

Leadership is a choice. You have to want to be a leader. And it should not be because of the status, promotion, or pay you’ll get. Yes, those things are nice but should not be the crux of your desire to be a leader. Leaders are servants to their team. They help their teams become the best version of what they can be. The leaders, at times, need to put their own self-interests aside in favor of the interests of the team and of the organization. The job of a leader can be hard, with difficult decisions and possibly confrontations. But the results, when the team achieves and at times exceeds its goals, are outstanding. The sense of accomplishment that you and your team will have is hard to describe. And, when they succeed, you succeed.

And once you and your team succeed, there’ll be more opportunities to lead and succeed. Are you willing to make that commitment and be a leader?

What does it take to become a leader?

So let’s say you answer yes, you want to be a leader. What does it take?

There are many things that leaders do and need to know about. Many of them are leadership skills. Many are management skills. Both are necessary to succeed as a leader.

The major areas to focus on are:

Your leadership skills in general. What behaviors are necessary to be a successful leader? How do you assess and understand the readiness of your team members?
The outcome/goal/result your team must achieve. How does it complement/support your organization’s?
The strategy that your team must align to, refine, and drive. And sometimes create.
The planning of the various efforts so that they can be successful.
Their execution of the various efforts, making sure they are successful.
Your team’s and your self-development.
Intra-team dynamics.
Your relationship (and the team’s) to stakeholders.

I’ve written about many of these but wanted to start a series of articles to further organize that information. I’ll start with leadership skills, describing the Six Domains of Leadership™ and at least another model, Situational Leadership.

In the meantime, here are some of my prior articles that will start to shed some light in these aspects, in case you haven’t read them. There are many others, so check my page: https://josesolera.medium.com for more.