Best skills for an IT manager

Repo Man

Like a lot of people in IT I had always dreamed of being some wiz engineer and administrator. I've been working in IT now contracting for 5 years in a level 2 help desk / desktop type job looking for that 'big break' into a sys admin role or desktop engineering which never came. When I finally decided it was time to take a chance and start looking for different employment my current company offered me a full time job as an IT manager of the desktop team.I never expected to get into management and I'm not exactly sure what I should plan to do to excel at this position. I obviously won't be jumping into anything right away as I want to focus the majority of my time learning the team and environment and seeing what is expected of me. For any who have had a similar role which of the following would you see as being the most beneficial?

1. Go for a bachelors degree. I currently have an associates from a non accredited school so would be starting from scratch. Since work offers tuition reimbursement this would seem to make the most sense. I also consider this to be a huge con to my current resume as it is not widely respected.

2. Go for a higher level certification (MCSA/MCSE.) I feel like this knowledge would help me the most out of these 3 options as I will be working closely with the networking/server/engineering teams with ongoing changes and roll-outs. This new role is more of a technical lead then metrics/numbers focused.

3. Go after ITIL certifications. Admittedly, I find this the least interesting but we are a huge ITIL process shop and I figure management experience + ITIL certifications should allow me to get a similar job if I needed to look in the future.

datacomboss

I would get BS and advanced ITIL as well as work on your communications and people/comflict management skills.

GoodBishop

Go for the B.S. degree.

Smith0811

B.S degree suits you..

N2IT

I would find a trusted mentor and have him teach you all that he/she knows. From simple items such as rewarding/correcting employees (there is a right and wrong way to do this) to full blown personality analysis and understanding. I believe these items are > any certification or degree.

Until I had a mentor I didn't know anything. The funny/sad part is now I realize how many managers are just plain bad.

Side note you are good on ITIL certifications IMO. Anything more than foundations is really just a waste. I know several executives down through directors and while some have ITIL F, none of them have the intermediate ones.

Repo Man

Maybe I'll keep this updated as a diary for the next month or so for anyone else who ends up in a similar position. My thoughts after the 1st week of work is that this is going to be a difficult transition for me.

• The actual day to day 'managing' has been relatively smooth as I have always been a leader, got along with coworkers and enjoyed helping others. I feel like I have pretty good relationships with my new team already.

• I'm a very easy going person and always get along with everyone so the negative reactions from some people has me a bit down. I understand being frustrated with not getting a role, and I expected that to some degree, but still it doesn't feel good.

• I feel completely unprepared technically for this. I've never been in a jack of all trades type role where I have had to sink or swim. I've worked out of corporate headquarters for most of my jobs with very specific tasks. The people I manage are the lone IT at 'satellite' offices with much better experience/knowledge. Having people continuously come to me for answers I don't have has probably been the most difficult challenge to me so far.

• Related to that: I have not had much guidance on what is expected of me. My boss working out of a different site and not having someone there to mentor me has made this more of a challenge for me. Am I being to hard on myself, was I not ready for this or do people have unrealistic expectations of me? I'm not sure yet but time will tell.

Time to hit the books I guess

N2IT

Not having an advocate or mentor can really stunt your growth, but you can't stop you gotta keep moving forward. I found reading management books to be extremely helpful while I was managing. It was more effective to apply theory with real world situations, then to just read the theory and let it sit with no real action.

Your last bullet IMO shows you care which is really a majority of the battle. A lot of people really don't care they just want to get paid. It sounds like you'll do fine.

One piece I want to add. I believe being a strong leader is learned at a very early age, through empathy and other attributes that lend well to leadership. However management is a skill that can and has to be learned. There is more of strategy behind it and that will come with time. Keep reading and learning about management skills, emotional intelligence and other areas of concentration in that scope and you should pick up a lot of awesome knowledge that will help fill in those knowledge gaps.

Best of luck!

pinkydapimp

Some great advice in this thread. The only thing i will add is as some point you will want to try to gain an understanding of the business side. Because once you understand that side of things(for example what each department does, their processes, etc.), you can start to find ways to bring value to the business. Whether thats saving the company money by efficiently managing storage through technology and processes or its building the business case to invest in an expensive solution which will provide ROI 3 years out but make the users jobs more efficient. Once you understand how you can help the business, and are able to communicate this to non technical people, you will be extremely valuable to the organization.

stryder144

From a managerial perspective, there are a number of decent resources you could use to help you out. In no particular order:

1. Lincoln on Leadership
2. The One Minute Manager
3. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
4. Principle Centered Leadership
5. First Things First
6. How to Win Friends and Influence People
7. QBQ! The Question Behind the Question
8. The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant
9. Who Moved My Cheese?
10. The Go-Getter
11. Rhinoceros Success
12. The Go-Giver
13. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
14. The Leader in You

From the technical perspective, you don't need to know all the answers, obviously. You should consider getting books, videos, etc that deal with each of the different technologies that are supported by your company. For instance, CBTNuggets, Safari Books Online, etc.