10 Skills You Need to Lead an IT Team

Top Skills You Need to Lead an IT Team

Being a leader in an IT team means efficiency, productivity, motivation, and many other relevant characteristics. This is a very important position that brings not only an honorable status but also responsibility for setting goals and reaching results. It is said not every person could become a leader. That’s true, and it’s also fair to say that developing new skills helps a person to become a better captain in the team.

Who is a successful leader

IT leadership is an area of questions and stereotypes. Most people want to manage other people but don’t want to carry tons of responsibilities. They only want to get numerous awards, high salaries, and extra bonuses. As a result, leadership is often romanticized by creating an aura of success. In real life, being a leader means a lot of stress, obligations, responsibility, and hard work.

Many IT companies are established without the understanding of the role of a leader in it. Moreover, it’s quite usual to have issues with hiring. Experts from this well-known company pay extra attention to hiring top managers and other employees of the IT organization. This means a chance for a skilled and qualified candidate to take a vacant position of a leader and lead the team to success.

Be sure that success is beside you. You have all the reasons and opportunities to be a leader tech who knows how to perform all responsibilities and enjoy the job. Just keep in mind that becoming a captain of the IT team isn’t effortless. You must work hard and have the required qualities. Let’s pay attention to the exact skills a successful tech leader must have.

10 essential skills of a professional IT leader

From empathy to the ability to keep your face in tragic situations, a leader has to possess leadership qualities on the highest level. It’s not enough nowadays to have relevant knowledge and qualifications in the IT industry. You also have to possess specific skills and personal features to be able to be superior to other employees.

So today we are going to cover 10 essential skills for IT leaders that are a must. Without such features, you can run a team of developers but your management wouldn’t be what everyone needed. So to reach the global goals, it’s vitally important for you to possess the following quantities.

Apply now for IT jobs in USA

Top Tech Skills In Demand For IT Industry

To have a business focus

As it was mentioned before, leadership in technology area differs from others. You can’t only focus on the direct tasks of your team – to develop software and complete projects on time. You must have a business focus as well. Only such an approach lets a company succeed in the market.

A business focus means an ability to analyze the market of the IT industry, clarify gaps that customers have, and create proper solutions that would be in demand. Otherwise, all applications and programs of the best quality will stay outside of the users’ needs and don’t make money for your company.

So having a business focus is very important for an IT leader. By looking for answers on how to satisfy business needs, your company will have better achievements and perspectives.

To build healthy relationships

The IT industry is considered to be a perfect place for introverts and people who are not used to social connections for any reason. But this is an old-fashioned stereotype. Communication and relationships between people are essential elements of any team.

A business leader is responsible for building a healthy work atmosphere in the team. No matter if the major employees are in-house or freelancers, you have to build relevant connections between them, improve communication, solve conflicts, build trust, improve respect, and prevent huge problems. All these activities are meant to increase an IT team’s productivity.

That’s why a team leader in the IT industry must have great communication skills. You should build trust between you and your employees to be able to take control under potential issues and everyday routines.

To clarify the context

You may have already created a dream team in your company. Every member starting from a manager to a developer is a perfect person that suits the position as well as possible. As a result, every member of your IT team tries to contribute to a new project. But why do things go wrong?

It happens because people accidentally lose an understanding of the context. As you can see, every individual understands things, in particular, so without the proper explanation of the project, task, or question, many people could misunderstand you and each other.

A professional team leader understands when things go wrong before everything goes wrong. You should not only predict issues but also prevent misunderstandings. That’s why the ability to clarify a context is so important.

To select the best leadership style

There are a variety of leadership styles you can use. The main problem is to select the proper one. Your ambitions and desires may differ a lot from the real situation.

Just pay attention to what your team requires. It’s obvious that you may prefer the exact leadership style. For instance, you plan to hold morning meetings every day to clarify what every member of your IT team has gained. But such an approach will cause huge delays in project performance because it takes too much precious time. As a result, it would be much wiser to hold morning meetings once a week instead of every day.

So a technology leader must meet the current needs and opportunities of your team. Your goal is to enhance their productivity but not to ruin everything by using an inappropriate leadership style.

To see the future

This is a kind of abstract skill but it helps to understand where your team is now and what your goal is. Thanks to direct answers to these questions, a team leader is capable of stating the vision of your department or the whole company.

Relying on the vision and mission, you have all opportunities to catch the current trends in the IT industry. It makes you feel comfortable in any crisis towards your goals and allows you to adapt to changes without extra complications.

To state the question ‘why?’

If you understand why something happens and can explain it to your team then hardly any crisis can be right off the road for you and your company. Your job as a tech leader is to help your team receive a full understanding of each project, its requirements, and so on.

Of course, your ability to answer such questions is also required. Using proper questions and fair answers helps to build a comprehensive and efficient strategy for development. Thanks to your flexibility, you aren’t afraid to correct it too.

To have great management skills

It is obvious that an IT leader is a manager who is responsible for managing employees. But your management abilities must be spectacular and include the following skills:

– problem-solving. No matter what happens – this is up to you. A team leader must be able to deal with fear and find the best solution for any problem as fast as possible;

– crisis management. Issues, panic, and stress are forever side-effects of developing software. So be keen on dealing with a crisis of any scale;

– project management. You need to understand the development cycle and its particularities. It includes requirements for projects, deadlines, realizers’ responsibilities, etc.

To fix but not to blame

If anything goes wrong, the easiest reaction is to blame someone else. For instance, a developer who made a mistake or a QA professional who didn’t notice the issue and reported about it. But a team leader shouldn’t be concerned with finding a responsible person.

Your task is to fix the situation. The project isn’t delivered – then find out how to deliver it within the extra deadline. There is a bug in the software – make sure developers will find and fix it as soon as possible. That’s why a tech leader must take care of emotions and be able to be a few steps ahead.

To motivate employees

Motivation and discipline are essential parts of the workflow. Their features make you clean your teeth before going to bed and writing a report even knowing it wouldn’t be read.

An experienced tech leader knows how to motivate employees. You need to make them excited and motivated to do their jobs no matter the circumstances. It plays a great role in building healthy relationships between people in the team and among the exact employee and the job.

To possess important personal features

It’s now enough to be a qualified and experienced team leader to provide your employees with essential management. Personal qualities also matter.

Besides technical leadership skills, you must possess the following personal features: strong work ethic, personal responsibility, flexibility, honesty, pleasant personality, etc. Also, you should fit the general corporate culture and the atmosphere of the department as well.

If you want to become a tech leader you need to invest in yourself. Develop relevant skills and personal features so you can become a real professional! These 10 skills will definitely help you to move closer to your goal.