Management Training

[Nic Gibson]

On May 3, 2007, at 10:55, Smylers wrote:

> At some point in the past year work saw fit to put me in a role with
> management responsibilities.  Given that I got here solely on the  
> basis
> of my Perl development abilities (I didn't ask to become a manager,  
> and
> I've never claimed I'd be any good as one), I can't see why work would
> expect me to be any good at it, something which I've pointed out to
> them.
>
> So they've said I can go on some kind of managery training course.   
> Has
> anybody got any recommendations of a course that's worthwhile?  Or
> anti-recommendations of a course that's a waste of time?

A long time ago (about 8 years) I was in exactly the same position.

I was sent on an Learning Tree[1] course called Management Skills for
Technical Professionals. The course was pretty good but the teacher
was superb. So, I would investigate the course but see if you can
find out if someone called Bob Black is teaching it.[2]

Hmm. Looking at the website this course doesn't exist any more.
Sigh. There is a course called 'management skills' but that seems to  
be it.


I think this is something that happens a lot in 'technical'  
environments.
People get promoted into a management position because of their
professional/technical expertise. Sadly, brilliant programmer X is not
going to be brilliant manager X. In fact (s)he might be utterly
pissed off manager X because they're now in the position of not
using those skills (to some extent).

Good luck with it anyway

nic


>
> Smylers

[1] Yes, I work for them sometimes.
[2] I'm new at the Learning Tree thing and don't actually know how
to check that on the intranet.