Summary
In today’s episode, I interview Dr. Katrina Burrus, founder and CEO of MKB Excellent Executive Coaching, about the challenges technical experts face when moving in to management, the importance of cultural fit, and the kinds of skills you need to succeed as a manager.
Links and resources
- Dr. Katrina Burrus on LinkedIn
- MBK Excellent Executive Coaching
- Katrina’s book – Managing Brilliant Jerks: How Organizations and Coaches Can Transform Difficult Leaders into Powerful Visionaries
- Andrea Janzen’s coaching company: Ambition Theory
- American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
- Free eBook – Engineering Leadership 101: https://www.engineeringandleadership.com/leadership101
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Credits
Main segment Music Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba featuring Morusque, Jeris, CSoul, Alex Beroza. ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/33345. CC Attribution (3.0).
Intro/ Outro Music – Move Like This by spinningmerkaba featuring Texas Radio Fish, Alex Beroza, and Snowflake. ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/33397. CC Attribution (3.0)
Mailbag keychee – driptrips – 120bpm – samplepack by keychee. ccmixter.org/files/keychee/32541. CC Attribution (3.0).
Found this interesting. Think the first hurdle is getting brilliant jerks to realise their emotional intelligence needs improving. To consider culture but also think to be straight with someone on the issue. Though business aptitude surveys for everyone’s evaluation sounds better inside ones organisation it is outside leadership that make it harder.
Hi Wayne,
Thanks so much for this! I agree completely – recognizing that you as a leader might have room for growth is hard, especially for folks who are used to being high performers.
One of the interesting things Katrina mentioned in the interview is that, because many “brilliant jerks” are high performers, there’s a built-in desire to improve. Once an issue is recognized, there’s all the incentive in the world to try and do something about it. The hard part is, as you mentioned, is someone stepping up to provide the direct feedback that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. I’ll have to have that as a topic for a future episode!
So glad you liked the show! Thanks again for leaving the comment. I’ll be sure to feature this in next week’s mailbag.
Pat