Video Text: Skills Curve: Why Leaders Fail

Forty percent of all new first time manager’s fail within the first 18 months. Now, who here wants to be a leader? Good because that’s what I like talking about.

At the individual contributor level, 90% of our success depends on our technical skills, our individual skills, and only ten percent depends on our people skills, or interpersonal skills. But as soon as you get promoted to that first supervisory position it’s 50/50 and it’s where the greatest change occurs. It’s not the same.

Your skill set necessary to do your job is much, much different. You now have to work with people. You now have to get them to get along. You now have to get them to work together. You need to have them hitch their horses to the same wagon and pull in the same direction and that is not an easy task for leaders because everybody’s got a personality and everybody’s personality doesn’t always mesh with the other person.

So, you’ve been identified as succeeding here at the individual contributor having the technical competence level, so congratulations for that, and your boss has said I want to put more time energy and effort into your development as a leader. It’s your people skills, it’s not your technical skills. It’s your ability to get the team to do what’s necessary and then you’ll be more productive.