In search of the right tech leader fit, businesses traditionally prioritize either hiring individuals with high technical skills and talents or those with great interpersonal and leadership capabilities. Organizations in the new age require both: individuals who can combine technological expertise with people-leading skills.
Who is the ideal tech leader? One may ask. Based on the stage at which the company is, tech leadership profiles and associated responsibilities widely vary. As a bespoke executive search firm dealing with hundreds of companies, we spend considerable time understanding the visions and needs of organizations and the kind of tech leader they are looking for.
Steve Jobs once said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Great leadership necessitates a vision.
Rather than simply focusing on efficiency, a tech leader is critical to equipping businesses to deliver value and powering the future. For Tech Leaders to excel in their role, they must be well adept at using technology as a function in expanding business, shaping technology strategy and corporate versus business strategy, and catalyzing a cutting-edge ecosystem strategy.
This is where Tech Leader Coaching comes into play. Provided by top B-Schools all over the globe, such as Ivy League institutions, Cambridge University, as well as certificate courses by top banking and consulting firms in the world, coaching for technology leaders has become the need of the hour.
Coaching vs. Mentorship of Tech Leader
“A mentor is someone who sees your potential, believes in you, and helps you navigate your journey towards success.” – Sheryl Sandberg
“A coach is someone who helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses and guides you towards personal and professional growth.” – Brian Tracy
Mentoring and coaching are two distinctive positions that serve different functions in guiding and helping individuals. In terms of their role, a mentor is often a skilled and dependable counsellor who imparts information, insight, and life experiences to help the mentee improve on all fronts. A coach, on the other hand, concentrates on using a structured approach to assist people in identifying their goals, developing specialized abilities, and overcoming challenges.
A Tech Executive “mentor” will have managed engineering teams and will truly understand engineers’ realities, including all of their peculiarities and subtleties. They also have a thorough awareness of the challenges faced by engineering tech leader as well as interactions with tech executives.
A Tech Executive “coach,” on the other hand, may be somewhat removed from technical difficulties but is tremendously beneficial in terms of leadership abilities, management, dealing with colleagues, handling confrontations, managing up, and so on. Unlike the mentor, who will often set objectives for the learner and then provide feedback on observed performance, the coach will typically set goals for the learner and then provide comments on observed performance.
Coaching Tech Executives
As a Tech Leader, continuous improvement for both the individual and their team is a fundamental priority, despite the challenges that accompany top-level positions.
Coaching offers fresh perspectives on a range of issues, it draws attention to issues from a larger scale and assists in solving them more sustainably. It motivates you to extend your thinking and take into account alternative viewpoints. Coaching enhances communication abilities, gives clarity to messaging, and encourages productivity.
Leaders who have been coached are most likely to bring new abilities to their teams. Coaching becomes a company culture as a result. It highlights deeper problems and helps you overcome them with more effective solutions. It encourages you to broaden your thoughts and consider other perspectives. Tech Leadership coaching can also instruct in other crucial business aspects, including risk assessment, project management, financial management, and business strategy, and help make judgments with such cross-functional knowledge possible.
Overall, a coached tech leader helming a crucial position through his foresights will make a great addition in today’s highly-competitive landscape. These leaders will not just fuel a firm’s innovation but also be a harbinger, fostering necessary development in the grand scheme of things.
Authored by Nishka Agrawal
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