What is technical leadership?

Welcome to this blog on technical leadership!

It has been 9 months since I started conducting 1-day workshop on “Becoming a successful technical leader”. Over 150 budding technical leaders from 10 technology organizations (all based in Bangalore) have participated in this workshop. Information about the workshop can be found here.

During the workshop, we discuss various topics related to technical leadership mostly in the context of the technology industry in India. For example, why do we need technical leaders? Do we really need them at this point? What should be the role of such people in services industry? What should a technical leader be doing in a products company? And so on. I end up meeting various stakeholders like senior managers (including Chief Technology/Development Officers), project managers and technical leaders. I intend to use this blog to express my own ideas on this topic as well as publish conversations I have with various stakeholders.

In this article, we will look at various connotations of the term “Technical leader”. I have come across following usages:

1. Person with designation “technical leader”
2. Person leading or managing technical people
3. Person on technical career ladder (known as tech-ladder)
4. Person who carries a personal technical brand

I guess all the usages are relevant in their contexts and they are overlapping in their meaning. For example, most of the time, a person with designation “technical leader” is also a person who is managing technical people. Similarly, a person on technical ladder is also the one who carries a personal technical brand. However, if I were to choose one defining characteristic of a technical leader, I would choose the last one: i.e. the one who carries personal technical brand.

What is a personal technical brand? It is your ability to influence a bunch people with your technical expertise. These people may or may not be reporting to you. This is where it differs from what is called “span of control” (people directly or indirectly reporting to you). Many times personal brand goes beyond the organization. We will discuss this in more detail in the subsequent articles.