The challenge leadership teams are facing
Leadership teams often experience a familiar challenge. Despite being comprised of highly capable technical leaders, decision-making can feel slower, more complex, and less aligned than expected.
Leadership teams are frequently made up of technical leaders who have developed their skills and experience within a technical or specialist domain. In interviews with business leaders over recent months, we have seen how this enables them to bring deep-seated technical expertise into leadership team decision-making, while also resulting in decisions being shaped through differing and often conflicting specialist lenses.
In order to transform leadership teams’ effectiveness, we need to support technical leaders to make the transition to becoming enterprise leaders.
Making this transition does not undervalue the contribution, skills, or experience of technical leaders. Rather, it ensures that technical contributions are communicated clearly within the context of the business and the strategy, informing the decision-making process in a more connected and aligned manner.
from technical leadership to enterprise leadership
Enterprise leaders view the organisation at a systemic and strategic level and therefore understand how the various component parts of the organisation connect, interact, and combine to deliver leveraged value. They recognise the value of technical expertise as an essential factor in business leadership but a contributory factor rather than necessarily a driving factor.
Over the past few months, we have conducted a series of interviews with business leaders to understand how they have practically helped technical leaders make this transition. The interviews confirmed that this is an issue for many organisations and also that there are very practical and effective solutions available to support technical leaders in becoming enterprise leaders and transforming leadership team effectiveness.
Each of the people interviewed shared their experience either of making the transition themselves or of supporting members of their team through it. All spoke about the fundamental importance of mindset.
The enterprise leadership mindset
Adopting an enterprise leadership mindset was central to the successful stories they shared and was evidenced by:
- taking a wide array of factors into account when dealing with the complexity and ambiguity of leadership
- building and maintaining high-trust relationships that enable teams with different experiences and perspectives to work effectively together in a mutually challenging and supportive manner
- understanding that co-creation of solutions is the most valuable approach to building outstanding customer-centric service and high-impact reputations
- embedding curiosity and learning at the heart of what we do — not being the expert with the answers but bringing questions that act as a catalyst to focus and galvanise the team
- being focused on the goal while remaining agile in execution so that teams can respond to changing circumstances quickly and collaboratively
Learning and embedding this enterprise leadership mindset was seen as central to success. The interviews identified very practical steps that could be taken by the individual, by their line manager, and by the organisation.
Interestingly, greater success came from those who applied all three levels to support the transition, whilst the least success came from approaches that placed accountability for change solely on the shoulders of the technical leader.
What gets in the way - and what makes the difference
In these stories, the gravitational pull of technical experience and expertise, compounded by a lack of confidence in adopting a broader business-focused mindset and constrained by limited support, often resulted in technical leaders remaining in technical roles rather than developing broader business leadership capability.
Webinar
We will explore these stories and the insights gained in more detail, sharing practical steps that support the development journey and deliver impact quickly.
The main learning, however, is clear. Technical leaders make a huge contribution to organisational effectiveness. If we work together to develop and embed an enterprise leadership mindset, we can significantly enhance both the value contribution and the co-creative experience of the leadership team.
