ARTICLE FROM NATIONAL OUTLOOK MAGAZINE – MARCH 2007
DEVELOPING LEADERS IN A TECHNICAL WORLD
The Challenges for Technical Leaders
By Dr Sylvie Vanasse & Phillip Pascoe-Thomas
According to recent research conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) leaders will increasingly be expected to possess deep industry or functional expertise along with advanced communication, team-building and workforce management skills. This means that successful leaders in professional consulting firms will be required to be highly flexible and vary their management style to cater for a diverse and multi-generational workforce while remaining technically credible with their clients.
So, where do leaders acquire such skills? Leadership and management skills are superficially, if at all, covered in technical university curricula. As a result, the industry relies on organisations to fill the gap. Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) has implemented the following ten strategies to help develop their leaders and minimise the loss of talented employees.
1. Put people development as one of your top three business priorities
High-performing businesses put people development as one of their top three business priorities. This is even more so for people businesses, such professional consulting firms. McKinsey claims that good leaders spend at least 35 percent of their time on people matters. Jack Welch, the famous chief executive of General Electric, attributed this practice to his success.
2. Create a culture that fosters positive relationships between employees and leaders
Culture can be defined as “the way we do things around here”. This way should be fostering employee-manager intimacy through supportive, based-on-coaching, continuous and candid feedback.
Culture is underpinned by values. However, values can backfire and bring about disenchantment from employees unless all leaders, in particular senior managers, are seen to live the values and act as role models.
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