Technical Leadership
by
Charlie Bess
Back in the 80s, I read a book titled Becoming a Technical Leader by Gerald Weinberg (I just noticed that he has a blog on his web page). This book is one I recommend to anyone who is thinking about technical leadership vs. formal leadership. Technical leadership does not seem to be something that is covered effectively by the formal training at any university I've ever seen. Similarly, universities don't really cover the move to formal business leadership either, yet you'll end up in one camp or the other throughout your career.
When talking about technical leadership Jerry states: "Leadership is the process of creating an environment in which people become empowered."
Technical leadership is something that may appear natural, but actually takes a great deal of practice and research. In order to be a leader, you need to have enough context about what is going on to have a vision and then convey it to others. You have to develop enough influence so that others (individual performers and formal leaders) care what you have to say. Technical leadership is more about leading a process than leading people directly. I easily spend 10-14 hours a week researching technical topics, and still feel that is grossly inadequate.
In order to be a technical leader, you need to develop a network of people who will listen to what you have to say and follow. After all a leader without followers is not a leader. Blogging may be one way to do this, but there are many others. The most effective one that works for me is just answering other folk's questions. If enough people feel they owe you, you have some influence; I guess that would be "The Godfather" school of technical leadership. A leader needs to be productive through others and part of that is connecting others together.
Tom Hill, one of the other fellows in EDS, spoke some wise words about technical leadership, they were "Don't discourage them". Meaning: when folks you are dealing with have some wild idea that you really don't understand or you don't think will work, support them, bounce concepts off them, cajole them, but don't ever discourage them. When people are empowered, they feel free to act, ask hard questions and be creative.
Having said that though, a leader does need to have a definition of quality. I've said for years that you demonstrate your definition of quality to others by showing "Quality is what you'll put up with". A technical leader must be able to convey when the results being generated are not up to their standard. Usually this is done through suggestions, and examples. Technical leaders need to have a quiver full of alternatives that they can shoot into the heart of technical activities to make them stronger, not weaker (sorry it's almost Valentine's Day and I had to get a cupid metaphor in there. ;-)
