The desire to obtain expertise can bring top manager harm , not good.

In a previous article I wrote about why each team should be very different players .In addition to various cultural and professional outlook , temperament and life experience , every person is predisposed to perform certain work: Someone better find new ideas , some of their realizovuet , and someone performs the duties of best top-manager , manager and other staff members which poses new challenges. Of course , each of us has its advantages and disadvantages. In a strong team, the good news is that people are imperfect perfect combination.

To become a leader ?

Often, moving up the career ladder a person has to change their priorities . And if the manager can always remain a manager in any other company, specialists and experts in certain questions must make a choice: to abandon further move up the career ladder, but retain their beliefs , teach or coordinate the work of a team , learning management skills and management.

Talking about such changes in the professional growth of a person , it is impossible not to recall the words Prutkov , who believed that a specialist like a flux – from a good specialist will never be a good manager . But based on my experience , I would like to refute this assertion.

It is very important that a person be motivated to gain new knowledge and skills , meet new challenges , and that he had ample time and opportunity to develop new skills . In this case can be a good example of a vice- president of technology at Microsoft’s Brian Harry , whose career started with a classic garage startup. Later, Microsoft acquired his project , calling it Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, which is part of Microsoft Visual Studio. And Brian , being a programmer , successfully mastered the skills of the manager. Now he is involved in the creation of Microsoft Visual Studio – one of the main projects for Microsoft developers. You can not say that Brian , formerly a successful expert, now copes poorly with the work of the manager. And this is not an example.

Change should be gradually

There are many such examples. Often there are times when a good expert is raised to a top manager without any training . Of course , many cases turn out to be unsuccessful , and the company at the same time lose two good employees: Managers and experts . And it’s not because of the nature of the employee or his propensity to work, and because the change must be gradual . If you want to become a good steward of specialist and was interested in it , learn new skills he should be at a lower level – managing a small team or middle- management positions .

What’s interesting is today a specialist does not have to give up the performance of the duties in which he is an expert , and fully devote themselves to the financial , personnel and paperwork . Thanks to the electronic workflow and modern communications is becoming increasingly easier to combine work and the head of the expert. Similar examples exist too much.

Simply put, any expert can become a good leader. I am often asked whether it may be the opposite. Do managers need good expertise in his work ?

I believe that everything is a bit more complicated . Sure, every leader must possess considerable expertise . Whether it’s telecom , IT and food industries. Otherwise he can not win the respect of his subordinates, and the main thing – to understand what strategy should I choose for business development. But too carried away by detail , to strive for a deep expert knowledges is not worth it , as it may not be for the head of dignity and weakness. In this case, it is impossible not to remember the saying of the man who can not see the forest for the trees. Only in this case , too deeply studying the same direction, you can see the big picture of the business and not allow fewer errors than in the absence of expert knowledge.

In other words, the leader must be a balance between the production and use of their knowledge and the assistance of its staff , which is always possible to assign tasks , for which you must have considerable expertise. In any case, I ‘m sure you have your own opinion about this. I would be happy to debate . How do you think a manager to be an expert , and, conversely, whether the expert to become a good manager? What are some examples of these changes can lead to?