Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Professional Development Strategies: Page 7 of 9

In addition, project-management education is often overlooked for line IT employees. The attitude in IT seems to be, "If I wanted a project manager, I'd hire one." But when you think about the many projects a network engineer embarks on, it makes good sense that he or she be familiar with at least the basics of project management.

Do You Want Fries With That?

Business and customer-service skills can be the most difficult to develop. In general, you'll want to focus first on communications: Can your network admin write a coherent memo or express herself succinctly at a meeting? Is your helpdesk analyst giving users choices, or is he laying down the law and slamming down the phone?

You certainly can "train" these skills, and courses are available that, like time-management classes, will give your staff the basics. Indeed, many organizations have "corporate universities" to develop just these skill sets.

You'll also want to look at the way your organization measures IT success, because you're communicating what's important by the way you judge your managers and staffers. If it's all about uptime, you're sending a message to your data-center manager that other things aren't important. Each role is different, but to build your data-center manager's people-management skills, for example, you might want to have, as a goal, coaching employees a certain number of times per quarter, either to praise correct behavior or to encourage better performance.