Managing technical professionals demands a distinct set of leadership skills. These individuals—whether 10x engineers, full-stack developers, technical visionaries, data experts, or elite scientists—offer exceptional expertise but can also bring unique management challenges. They may be fiercely independent, deeply focused on their work, or driven by intellectual curiosity and autonomy rather than traditional corporate incentives. Leaders of technical teams must skillfully navigate these dynamics to foster collaboration and unlock their teams’ full potential.
Leading Technical Professionals and Teams is designed to help emerging and current leaders develop a practical toolkit for managing and motivating high-performing technical talent. Over two immersive days, participants will delve into the complexities of mentoring and rewarding technical staff, forming new technical teams, and understanding management styles through case studies and examples such as Amazon, SpaceX, Ford, Facebook, GSK, Google, the Broad Institute, and Los Alamos National Lab. The course addresses modern challenges, including managing international teams and designing team responsibilities for remote work. Moreover, it offers practical tools for leading exceptionally talented individuals who may require tailored management approaches.
At the end of this course, participants will be equipped to:
- Describe how teams can be designed, not just inherited
- Calibrate a team culture on exploration and innovation
- Articulate tradeoffs on coordination effort vs. team agility
- Identify what type of technical and managerial supervision is desired
- Use data-driven management
- Diffuse team member conflicts and set clear role boundaries
- Build a better set of annual goals
- Identify coachable communications objectives
- Identify technical rework, its causes, and how to avoid it
