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  2. Defense Acquisition Magazine
  3. Defense Acquisition May-June 2019
  4. Growing Technical Professionals Into Leaders

Growing Technical Professionals Into Leaders

Growing Technical Professionals Into Leaders

David Pearson

Acquisition professionals must continue delivering innovative, cutting-edge technologies to ensure our nation’s warfighters retain their technical advantage across the battlespace. A key enabler of sustained technological success is a workforce that not only is technically proficient but also equally proficient as technical leaders who can direct their teams and organizations toward solving the most challenging technical problems. However, many organizations wait until a technical professional is placed in a leadership role to put that person into extended (or abbreviated) leadership training right when their primary focus should be on solving problems.

Recognizing that leadership development needs to begin prior to appointing someone to a leadership role, the then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering directed the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) to develop a career model for the technical acquisition workforce that captures the key elements required to develop technical leaders.

Through a literature review, structured interviews with leaders across multiple technical industries and organizations, a research team comprising of Dr. Wilson Felder, Dr. Katherine Duliba, Dr. Steve Yang and Dr. Mike ­Pennotti concluded that the highest performing technical organizations have a systematic culture of technical leadership where technical professionals develop both technical and leadership capabilities over the course of their careers—beginning upon entry through their mid-career and ultimately as senior leaders. The research team’s work resulted in creation of the Technical Leadership Development Framework as a guide for individuals, supervisors and executive leaders of technical organizations to embed a career-spanning leadership growth process for their technical workforce.

What Is Unique About Technical Leadership?

Just as a military leader on the battlefield requires both effective warfighting tactics and the ability to inspire and lead warriors, technical leaders, whether leading a small project team or a major technical organization, must be able to leverage their technical subject-matter expertise with leadership skills to drive results in working with others. The researchers found that there are critical technical skills with important leadership attributes. The success of technical projects is only possible through the application of both technical skills and appropriate leadership. Therefore, as presented in Figure 1, technical leadership is found at the intersection of both technical and leadership competencies.


The Technical Leadership Development Framework

Before describing how the Framework can be applied in developing the technical workforce’s leadership capability over the course of careers, the individual elements of the Framework must be understood. In developing technical leadership, whether for an individual or an organization, the Framework includes interconnected elements working together that progresses over a career. Created by the SERC researchers, the Framework exhibited in Figure 2 presents the competency model (1) of technical and leadership competencies—the intersection in Figure 1—required for success, then it shows the typical career stages (2) and next several leadership development methods (3) that can be used to improve mastery of those competencies as a leader’s career evolves. Finally, the model is based on competency attainment metrics (4) that can be used to measure the progressive mastery of the competencies. Now we will examine each of these elements in a bit more detail.

Framework Element 1: Technical Leadership Competencies

The foundation of the Framework is the list of 24 competencies that are developed when combining two competency domains: the purely technical competencies and purely leadership competencies. These competencies are essential to the technical leadership activities of guiding, directing, motivating and developing a team of professionals possessing engineering, scientific, technological or mathematical skills and knowledge. As Figure 2 shows, the list is broken down into 12 purely technical competencies and 12 purely leadership competencies. The complete list and their associated definitions are found in Table 1.


Framework Element 2: Career Stages

The Framework recognizes that a technical professional’s career evolves over time where both technical and leadership responsibilities grow. It is expected that the rising professional’s proficiency in the technical leadership competencies will grow to meet the increasing leadership challenges as a career progresses. In identifying three career stages, three broad guidelines were used:

  • The number of people for which the technical professional is responsible
  • The level of decision-making authority the professional has been given
  • The level of technical expertise the professional possesses, typified by years of experience and the variety of programs worked

Though not rigid in definition, the researchers used a three-level career progression in building the Framework: Junior, Mid-Level, and Senior. These levels are described in Table 2.

Framework Element 3: Leadership Development Methods

In order to successfully advance through their careers, technical leaders must develop greater proficiency across the Framework’s 24 combined competencies. Six development methods were identified during the research as the most effective methods of developing proficiency in the technical leadership competencies including: Education, Training, Experience, Rotational Assignments, Mentoring, Coaching, and Self-Directed Development. Each method is defined in Table 3. The distinction between mentoring and coaching is often misunderstood. Mentoring looks at an emerging technical leader’s overall career development through both formal and informal guidance, typically with a more senior leader. Coaching, on the other hand, is focused on driving behavior changes through more specific, goal-oriented learning provided by another professional expert in the behavior. The behavior can be either technical or leadership in nature, or the combination of the two areas into a technical leadership capability.

Finally, the Framework recognizes that the selection of leadership development methods varies with both the individual’s career stage and the specific competency. For example, for the Technical Planning competency, education and/or training have proven to be the most effective development methods for junior professionals, while experience and/or job rotations proved most effective for mid-level professionals, while finally, those at the senior level will improve their proficiency in this area most effectively through mentoring and/or coaching.


Framework Element 4: Competency Attainment Metrics

Proficiencies in the 24 technical leadership competencies can be measured—therefore, they can be tracked and reported allowing professionals to improve their proficiency over time. The Framework uses metrics to determine both the current performance baseline and/or the extent to which a developing technical leader has achieved competency proficiency. These metrics provide an evidence based measurement of a person’s knowledge, skill or abilities. Through observed actions, documentation and assessments, the metrics measure the extent to which learning obtained through the different leadership development methods has been internalized and manifested in the technical leader’s behaviors and the impact on program performance. Finally, understanding remaining gaps in competencies allows professionals to create development plans focused on specific competencies using the most effective development methods, thereby building their technical leadership capabilities over time.

Each career stage (junior, mid-level, and senior) has a unique and progressive set of key competency indicators that demonstrate progressive mastery of each technical leadership competency.

This concept can be extended beyond the individual level to the higher levels of management. For example, a branch head responsible for a group of engineers can use competency attainment metrics to assess the leadership strengths and weaknesses of his or her team. Expanding even further, the executive leader of a technical organization can look across the enterprise to find technical leadership gaps that require attention and growth. Using the metrics allows both the branch head and the executive leader to track improvement over time and any ongoing competency weaknesses to focus on addressing.

Applying the Framework

The elements of the Framework can be worked together to form an effective technical leadership program for individuals, technical teams or organizations. As an example, consider a junior engineer, maybe a recent graduate, recently assigned to a project team. As part of an initial and/or annual performance evaluation, the engineer along with his or her supervisor can conduct an assessment of the junior engineer’s technical leadership skills using the framework’s competency attainment metrics. In this assessment, the junior engineer’s proficiency in each of the 24 technical leadership competencies would be assessed and documented. In working up an Individual Development Plan, the employee would select competencies he or she would like to improve, identify the most effective development methods as covered in the Framework, execute the competency development effort, and then check for proficiency attained. This process of competency proficiency assessment and targeted development could be applied throughout the careers of technical professionals, from entry-level through even the most senior levels, as they continuously seek to improve their technical leadership capabilities.

Summary

The success of the many Department of Defense (DoD) technical organizations is driven by technical leaders who possess a unique blend of both technical and leadership skills. Recognizing this importance, DoD sponsored researchers to develop a Framework for progressive technical leadership development where they identified key technical leadership competencies, matched those competencies with proven development methods and, finally, metrics for assessing proficiency improvement across a technical professional’s career. DoD has published a guidebook and associated workbook (available at https://www.dau.mil/tools/Pages/AllTools.aspx) on how to apply this Framework for individuals, supervisors and technical organizations.

Author’s Note: The entire Systems Engineering Research Center technical report is available here.

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PEARSON is the Director of the Engineering and Technology Center at the Defense Acquisition University at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

The author can be contacted at [email protected].

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the Department of Defense. Reproduction or reposting of articles from Defense Acquisition magazine should credit the authors and the magazine.

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