Connected Leaders Are Technically Competent

Last week, I wrote about how employees want to work for managers that are able to express a clear vision and a strategy. I also added some thoughts on what constitutes a strategy.

This week, the final in my series looking at the 8 skills of great managers, we take a look at the idea that Connected Leaders are Technically Competent.

The list of skills:

1. Be a Good Coach
2. Does Not Micromanage
3. Cares about the Individual
4. Productive and Results Driven
5. Listens and Shares
6. Helps with Career Development
7. Clear Vision & Strategy
8. Technically Competent

Competence Is About Respect

The idea that managers are “technically competent” comes from Google’s Project Oxygen. Google is a software company. In many ways, they remind me of Motorola. Motorola was a company that let engineers do anything. Here’s one example: I had a degree in electrical engineering, and I ended up running a marketing department. No marketing degree. No business degree. Was I technically competent? No. Not in marketing. In electrical engineering? Even that was debatable. I could not design radio frequency circuits and the one article I tried to write for a trade magazine was bounced for being too simplistic. Apparently, the application of imaginary numbers is so rudimentary to electrical engineering as it was obvious — (I thought I had discovered a rather clever way of explaining the strange fact that smart people use made-up numbers to talk about real things. The magazine was not interested). Despite my paper qualifications, on one level, I did not meet the requirement to be technically competent. And yet, for my job I was.

It feels obvious, that in an ideal world, employees want to respect their managers. I also believe managers want to be respected. I believe I earned the respect of my staff because I could understand and appreciate what the engineers were telling me. But I also worked to understand more than the engineers. I worked with the sales team, the real professional marketers (people with degrees) and the army of technicians that made our products work and left the factory on time. I made the effort to make sure I knew what they needed. I could not do what the engineers did — nor could I do what the sales teams did, or what most of the people did. I did not have their specialization, or experience, or personality, but I could understand what mattered to them and what they were struggling with. I then aligned how I could help them solve their problem.

What I never did was try to compete with my engineers. I found it interesting that Motorola split management and engineering. In their system, individuals could be very well compensated without the need to have any direct reports. The management track on the other hand, was governed by head count. The higher up you went, the more people you needed reporting to you. The implication here was that once you became a manager, technical contribution was no longer a priority.

Motorola seemed to feel that someone had to get good at actually running the company. This worked for more than 60 years. (Unfortunately, it did not last as most of Motorola was spun off, split out, or folded into other companies). However, I digress.

Let’s get back to being technically competent.

It is about trust

I do not believe wanting to respect your boss is a bad thing, nor is it related to being an engineer. When you think about hierarchies of any kind, they have an interesting property. They filter for the qualities they sort on. Put another way, they can point us toward what is important. If designed correctly, a hierarchy can demonstrate what matters and what was the highest value. Competition produces hierarchies. Individuals or teams compete, and the winners, “come out on top.” At every level, you see progressive refinement if the competition is balanced. Motorola, I believe, tried to structure their system to sort for competence.

The Key Word is Competence

I know from firsthand experience that training your boss is no fun. It can be extremely disconcerting to try and “bring someone up to speed”, who seems incapable of understanding what it is exactly that you do. At the same time, working for someone who knows your job better than you can be just as stressful in the other direction. Will they ever let you just do it your way?

I believe the balance lies in the focus on being competent. I recently heard two experienced managers talk about how their staff assumed the bosses knew their job better than they did. The senior managers lamented that it is impossible for them to manage that level of detail. They counted on their staff to know more than they did.

However, not knowing how to do someone’s job is not the same as not being able to help. The key here is that a leader needs enough competence to be a resource for their staff. What I have seen is that staff respect managers and leaders who help them produce better outcomes. Of course, I think of it like a video game. Sports and simulations games are compelling because they put players in a position to make the same kinds of decisions at the players. I think great management is like this. When the information is presented in a way that you can understand the choices that must be made, you have demonstrated sufficient technical competence to be a good manager.

The Bottom Line

In my work experience, the desire for technical competence is rooted in something deeper than the raw skill of a manager. Nor do I believe it is limited to engineering. I was able to work with accountants, graphic designers, and marketing people because they did not want to work on an island. They wanted to work with people they could learn from. However, I have also successfully hired phenomenal people who knew much more about their job then I ever would. From my experience, technical competence is about respect. If you know enough to be a resource for your people, to help them achieve the meaningful work they are trying to complete, then chances are good your people will see you as competent.

On a personal note, I think at the end of the day, what matters more than a certification, degree, or qualification is the commitment to be a resource to your people. I have worked for people who did not have my qualifications. I have had people who reported to me with PhD’s. From my perspective, good management happened when my managers made the effort to understand my needs, and some of my best management happened when I made the effort to understand what my staff needed. To me, those were examples of being, “Technically Competent.”