In an interview today, I was asked to self-reflect on what skills I would need to develop to take me from where I am now as an individual contributor to being a good leader. (Note: I wasn't interviewing for a leadership role, but it'd be an IC role with the possibility to grow out the team.)
For those of you who have made that leap, what skills did you realize you needed besides some of the more obvious ones?
I needed to learn how to practice radical candor, so I could tap into a more empathetic mindset when approaching challenges with my team. As an IC I had a habit of approaching the deal cycle with precision and a small margin for bullshit. This doesn't work when you're managing humans.
Secondly, I needed to work on my communication skills with my new set of peers: other leaders in the org. Oddly enough, in my first leadership role, every single leader in the company was a Tuarus. We had strong opinions, would never admit we were wrong, and it lead us to some heated debates and knock-down-drag-out yelling fights between the co-founders. Through this experience, I realized that if I wanted to get things done I had to switch the way I communicated with other leaders so that we could come to mutual solutions.
Find a mentor, one that you trust and look up to as a leader, and start to work with them. That's my number one piece of advice.