Are Technologists Ever Ready for Technology Leadership

Leadership u-turn

One of the most common, yet seemingly unusual career changes I see in IT roles is highly successful, hands-on technologists progressing to C-level (CTO/CIO/CISO/CAIO/etc.), IT/Engineering Director, or VP of Engineering leadership roles, struggling, and then moving back to a more hands-on technical role. This almost always involves leaving the organisation.

I’ve done it myself. I thought by moving to a leadership role I’d be able to directly influence how technology is developed and delivered. I was wrong, and it nearly broke me. Twice.

Holding a leadership role can be a very lonely place to be. You need a support network around you to help you succeed, especially support from people who have been there before.

One of the key reasons I see for technologists stepping back from leadership positions is a removal from technology. Strong technologists frequently become disillusioned with existing leadership’s choices around technology and technical strategy. Technologists are problem solvers. Holding a leadership position should enable them to solve bigger problems, right? They believe they can do better and have a wider impact, but instead their technology skills become increasingly diluted the higher they climb. It can be a daunting prospect to leave behind the skills that have been the foundation of your career. It can be even more daunting to think that you may never recover them if you need to, as the industry has so quickly moved on.

Technology leaders [should] drive strategy, direction. They should be thinking at least 6 to 12 months from now and laying the organisational foundations to achieve this – less so the physical technical foundations. This can be quite a large step change for a hands-on technologist; a complete change in skills to focus on strategy, administrative, and managerial tasks.

But perhaps the main reason I see technologists stepping back from technology leadership roles is through a lack of personal development and planning. Hands-on delivery of technology projects is complex and just plain old really hard! You take on a lot of responsibility, need a broad and deep range of technical skills, and you need good interpersonal skills to help teams succeed. These are all great and powerful skills. However, whilst a technology leader [typically] requires decent technical knowledge, their role is focussed on: culture; financial planning and budgeting; risk assessment and mitigation; negotiation; sales; strategy.

Many successful CTOs have started from non-technical roles – they may not have great technical insight or vision but they have the strategic, administrative, and managerial skills to succeed. Non-technical roles, such as sales and marketing, develop many of the skills required to hold a leadership position, and if you can gain exposure to technology during your career, you can make a good CTO. You can be an amazing non-technical CTO by utilising your existing skills to develop your support network, which feels natural to you. If you are a strong technologist that can successfully transition into a technology leadership role, you can be amazing. But it is hard due to the exposure you have as a technologist in your early career.

Succesfully transitioning to technology leadership

So how do you successfully transition from a hands-on technologist to a technology leader? How do you have great technical vision and leadership skills.

If you are currently in a technology leadership role and this post resonates with you, you are not alone. There are support networks through mentoring, coaching, and online groups through which you can gain advice and develop your leadership skills. Trying to transition and rely on your engineering skills to solve your leadership challenges can be exceptionally difficult, so get some support.

If you are in a hands-on technical role and thinking about moving into technical leadership, you have time. You need a plan. You also need support. Ideally the existing technology leadership should be taking you under their wing as part of their succession planning. If they are not, maybe you need to start that conversation and be open about your aspirations – you will quickly get a clear view of how much support you will receive. The next thing is you need to develop your interpersonal skills, your emotional intelligence, and your leadership skills. You can do some of this through training. You can do some of this through shadowing. You can some of this through a great support network. You can do a lot of this through exposure, but how will you get this exposure?

But perhaps the biggest question to answer as a hands-on technologist is are you really happy stepping away from technology? Really? Really, really? It is always possible to catch-up with technology progression, but it is hard! Even more so nowadays with the catalyst from Artificial Intelligence.

Regardless of your current role, if you are an existing or aspiring leader, there are individuals out there, like myself, that can help. Mentoring is great way to tap into another person’s experience and get different viewpoints and alternative ideas. Coaching is a guided journey that helps you discover how you can best support yourself. A combination of both mentoring and coaching support is exceptionally powerful.

Thrive or survive

The key thing that I would hope everyone takes away from this post though is that a leadership role can be a very lonely place and every leader needs a strong support network to help them thrive, or at times just survive!