I want to be a manager but I don't have management experience

A- I want to be a dev lead or at least I want to try out leadership

B- good for you.

A- the only problem is I don’t have enough experience to start with

B- maybe you should ask your lead for a project you can act as lead.

A- I already asked but he said we don’t have anything right now so I will wait.

Just asking is for an opportunity is proactive I am OK but should we stop there, is work the only place we can get experience? The answer is NO. There are a lot of opportunities outside the work that can give same (or bigger) challenges we can have at work. For example nonprofit project: I am sure your church, mosque, temple, community … is looking for someone to manage a small project from start to finish. And you know what? Working on non-profit projects are more challenging than work, since there is no money to motivate people, you really must be smart while defending your ideas. You want someone to do something? You need to be 10 times convincing than you are at work.

And as an added bonus to getting experience you will be introduced to many people that you can add to your professional network. So are you up for a management challenge?