But from a manager's perspective, that's myopic thinking. Managers must think broadly, cope with uncertainty an d go beyond technology to embrace nontechnical solutions. John Stieber, a consultant at Hagberg Consulting Group, a management-assessment company in Foster City, Calif., cites three essential pillars of success necessary to being a successful manager. However, their weaknesses included insensitivity, impatience, inability to establish long-term relationsh ips, lack of empathy, unsociable, failure to keep others informed, inflexible and poor delegation skills. At the top of the list, Stieber puts poor communication skills as the technical professional's biggest roadblock to becoming a good manager.
Successful managers enjoy working with people.
That's not to say techies are loners or misanthropes. Schoenfeld also says many techies have difficulty making fast decisions, which is essential for being an effective manager. Managers must weigh contradictory information to make good decisions. One of the biggest reasons teams break up is the manager's failure to air and resolve conflicting opinions. You need a high level of intuition, which is the opposite of an analytical approach.