All leadership is like that. Even if you're not a people manager.
I'm an IC in a technical leadership position, all of these hold true with the added constraint that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I hold no carrot or stick.
I have to persuade, convince and influence, I have no reports (nor I want them) so to get anything done I need to get people to align and understand the value on its merits.
If people follow your direction, it is usually because the argument made sense, the trust was already there or you did the unglamorous work of aligning everyone beforehand
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All leadership is like that. Even if you're not a people manager.
I'm an IC in a technical leadership position, all of these hold true with the added constraint that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I hold no carrot or stick.
I have to persuade, convince and influence, I have no reports (nor I want them) so to get anything done I need to get people to align and understand the value on its merits.
The good news is those skills of getting people to believe in you and your thing are critical to leadership as an EM too.
I’m sure we all can think of managers who don’t have those skills but rely on the stick, and those managers are lousy at their job.
Good leadership skills have a lot of overlap between IC and EM.
If people follow your direction, it is usually because the argument made sense, the trust was already there or you did the unglamorous work of aligning everyone beforehand