Developing Technical Experts into Leaders

0:00people are the most consequential and dangerous forces on earth well personality psychology is about the nature of human nature it's about people and wouldn't that be useful to know it seems to me i can't i can't think of a more important problem you're listening to the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments the global leader in personality and leadership guided by your hosts hogan chief science officer and world-renowned personality psychologist dr ryan sherman alongside hogan's pr manager and

0:35resident storyteller blake lepp this podcast explores the impact of personality on life leadership and the nature of human nature hello everybody and welcome to the science of personality podcast i'm your host ryan sherman along with my co-host as always blake lepp say hello blake hello everybody and welcome back to the science of personality podcast episode 142 today ryan and i are joined

1:05by dr kevin mitchell the talent and organizational development manager at the mit lincoln laboratory to talk about developing technical experts into leaders in theory any high performer regardless of their area of expertise should at some point be rewarded with a leadership position but sometimes what makes someone a great software developer or network engineer might not translate to success once they ascend to a managerial role in this episode we will hear from kevin who has a wealth of

1:36experience in this area about how to successfully develop these high performers into effective and strategic leaders but before we get to our conversation with kevin if you wish to give us any ideas for upcoming episodes or you want to ask ryan or me a question shoot us an email at hello at the science of personality.com or follow the science of personality on linkedin now let's get to it kevin welcome to the podcast is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started yeah hello uh thank

2:09you blake thank you ryan for um uh you know inviting me on for this conversation outside of just uh what you shared in terms of title and what i did my background is in industrial organizational psychology and i got my degree from university nebraska at omaha and so excited to share just some of the uh you know experiences that i've had largely as an internal consultant across a variety of industries and um we'll bring in you know maybe some of the outside experiences of being a teacher or healthcare

2:39consultant that shaped some of that aspect there well kevin i just want to say thanks so much for joining us on this episode i mean this is a really important topic uh you know as blake said in the intro we run into this in many many fields where people have technical expertise and are often considered maybe the best employee on their team and are looking for promotions and the challenges that can come with promoting someone to a managerial role so super excited to have you on here given your

3:11your background uh at uh mit lincoln laboratory and and able to share with us some of the experiences that you've had some of the learnings that you've had and of course uh some of the research insights you have for us as well so so thanks for joining us today absolutely yeah for those who uh attend psyop um i kevin i think i think that's the first place i met you maybe two years ago in chicago um i i think and then um you know we you know you get to know that community uh even though i'm not a psychologist just kind of getting to go and actually see and meet all these people uh it's really

3:47been a lot of fun and and of course you're one of those that uh it's always a pleasure to run into you each year and uh if if i'm not mistaken kevin uh isn't your better half doesn't you work for hogan yes uh you may have heard us on the i guess that would have been the denver live psyop uh edition correct uh yes my better half is in a also a uh io psychologist and and works with hogan um and yeah we met we met at the apa conference in denver 10 years ago well for our listeners uh he's

4:20referring to nadine molly acall who uh joined us a few episodes back uh to discuss hogan and sports so uh if you get a chance go back listen to that episode if you haven't already but with that kevin let's let's kick this thing off you know with today's topic centered around developing technical experts into leaders i'm gonna kick this off like we do with most of our episodes what got you interested in this topic in the first place to be frank some of this was uh i found my way into

4:52it um you know i don't think that i set out when i was in kindergarten to say i want to grow up and be an io psychologist working on developing technical experts the uh really if i take a step back in my career it's it's been focused on developing individuals it started with working in the school systems in new orleans it uh translated into working with patient experience uh teams across the nation and then when i got into grad school uh it really started to bring these two interests

5:26together of leadership in in one regard and this this heavy strain of developing and and really seeing people grow in their career whatever they're focusing on and i was lucky enough to have mentors and have opportunities to consult laws in grad school with with areas as well as then um you know go into talent management teams and and learn and hone and build systems around that and so really what what got me

5:57into the technical expert aspect was i i have about a decade of you know time in the health care space and i always really appreciated the health care space because of what it does healing people healing their communities delivering care the stories that you hear from from hospitals are just frankly they're mind-blowing the types of technologies that they do and at the same time being an io psychologist it was okay you know we spend all of this time and energy at work and in the environment with these co-workers

6:33and with our leaders and with our leaders and really just taking the time to understand how and where the leaders can better impact and best impact the teams and the organizations and as part of that really then feeling like they're growing they're being challenged they're advancing as well they're having that positive impact and so it was kind of this you know conglomeration in grad school of finding an interest in leadership matching it with a heavy interest in developing others and then the expert

7:06expert leader aspect was really funneled through that domain knowledge and the domain work in the health care field kevin i know we're going to talk a little bit more about you know some of your experience and some of the work you do but can you tell us a little bit about uh mit lincoln lab what you know what what are you guys after there what and what is your particular role there what are you doing there just so we have some broader context for your experience yeah yeah absolutely so um i've been at lincoln for now two years and so it's a more recent shift um in terms of industry but not as

7:42recent in terms of the type of work that i do and so my responsibility being in the talent and organizational development team is uh really spearheading building out and enhancing the leadership development system that we have here at lincoln and so it's a small but mighty team really focused on not just the programs in terms of you know classroom time and development activities but also how we consider and think about succession and talent reviews how we think about you know what we want

8:13our leaders to look like for the future from uh you know for lack of a better term from a job description and then what does it look like in terms of our um you know selection and transition into those roles and so um that that's really the work that i do now is i've been you know i partner with our leaders i partner with the organization and my team really focuses and works on putting the pieces together offering programs coaching leaders all with the goal of you know enhancing their performance and

8:47effectiveness because ultimately what we're after as an organization is we're a research and development firm and a prototyping firm that works on technology for national security and so it's really important work it's very impactful work and our leaders have a as many other organizations our leaders have a very very big impact on the types of technology and research that happens and the teams that are working on them so that's really the role at lincoln and that that is largely aligned with the type of work i did at nebraska medicine as well is really focused on not just delivering programs but really thinking

9:23about how do we build a leadership system in an organization that is sustainable and that elevates our leaders from performance from effectiveness from outcomes to really drive their teams forward and drive themselves forward and therefore driving the organization forward well kevin as you mentioned you worked in healthcare and we also talked about you know you being at the mit lincoln laboratory both highly technical environments i would imagine um what do

9:53you see as the core mindset shift technical experts maybe need to make when they move into these leadership roles yeah it's it's an interesting question in terms of when i think of leadership development especially in this this this technical space there are some there are some specific aspects that come into play and so if i if i set the context for what we're talking about when we talk about a technical expert or a

10:23technical leader that transitions into this managerial or this leadership position oftentimes we're talking about someone who has you know very deep knowledge in a given area typically at least if we look at our economy these individuals tend to have a certain level of education a certain level of advanced education they have a reputation and a repertoire of work where they're the expert that people go to to problem solve to lead technical work to um you know solve maybe a thorny issue in terms of if something can't be

10:59solved and so you know when we think of the mindset shift when it comes to this type of of space and there's really some components that fall into it there's the individual component so has the leader been developing have they realized the assignments have we told them the assignments of what they're really supposed to be learning to grow and to expand just beyond their very you know potentially narrow domain expertise there's this organizational component of did the organization set a system in place

11:35for individuals who are growing that technical expertise to be prepared for that mindset shift and understand what that mindset shift would look like going into leadership and then there's really a peer and leadership kind of community component there in terms of you know what are the supporting structures from a mentoring and coaching perspective of really sharing practices and building a leadership community that's self-sustaining um and not only self-sustaining but really challenges itself to grow in meaningful

12:07ways and so you know to get to the core of your question about like well what is the core mindset shift if we extract some of what i just said there is that the big one for me when i see a technical expert is that shift from problem solver up into you know whatever you want to call it problem facilitator or you know problem coach oftentimes these technical experts are so used to being the expert the person

12:38who answers the questions and it is a big shift to move from i have to provide the answer to well now my role is to coach others to solve problems to build the capability to for them to solve those problems and my role now is to not only do that but to be more strategic and visionary so i can increase my impact for the organization and for myself so that's probably a big core one is really moving away from leveraging a lot of their expertise to a completely different skill set for themselves

13:11and sometimes you know what i'll just call out is a lot of times these technical experts they're leading they're doing leading types of things whether that's a technical lead whether that's a project manager or a program manager a nursing lead i think one of the myths that i hear a lot of times is well you're already doing the job and you might be doing aspects of the job but that jump at times is where we see oh there's still vestiges of diving into problem solving of always answering questions of

13:43not building the capacity and the capability of those underneath you or around you so that you can focus on really that next level of impact and so that is kind of the aspect of making that transition over and i would say like the last piece there is really it's okay i think to uh recognize and this is something i often tell the leaders when i'm coaching with them into my development programs of you're learning a new skill you're learning a new set of skills a new set of competencies

14:16let's recognize that and you're doing it in a way that is very visible so it's not like a you know you're learning a new equation you're learning you know a new way of building something where maybe it's in a classroom maybe it's you know private you're learning oftentimes some of these skills and some of these approaches in real time you're learning them in front of people and people are relying on you to do them well so i think there's there's oftentimes a trap there with the leaders of well i have to have the answers i have to know the answers they come to me because i always was able to

14:50provide answers and having them kind of shift off of that and the vulnerability that comes with that can be really really challenging of hey you know it's okay that you know a conflict resolution did not go well it's okay that a coaching conversation didn't lead to some amazing breakthrough it's okay that you had a tough feedback conversation there will be more of them and you will have iterations and you'll have cycles where you'll have the practice and the capability and ability to start to string successes

15:21together kevin kevin i'm kind of curious about the size and the base rate or just the sort of scope of this problem how often is this an occurrence for technical organizations where they struggle with this is it you know all leaders have these kind of struggles or is it you know half of the leaders or is it you know i'm sure it varies to a certain degree but i mean how many leaders would you say or what percentage of people coming from technical backgrounds would you say really struggle with

15:53the transition to a leadership role oh that's a great question ryan and it'd be completely speculating at this point um we're good at that that's okay yeah okay that's uh you know in your experience you know yeah i mean you know one way that this is a kind of a crude metric or measure you could you know i know there's it's pretty polluted but you could look essentially at some turnover rates if you really want to get at in the frontline leader rank in terms of you know where some of that struggle

16:25might be i wouldn't say that's a perfect number or metric but you know in some of my experiences i've seen where you can have anywhere between you know 10 and 30 kind of percent of individuals step out of those frontline leader roles but what i would say is that percentage is probably much higher for individuals who might quote unquote struggle in in the um kind of transition and i think that's honestly natural if if i'm being you know completely up front here is that a lot of times what i've seen

16:59in organizations is um is it goes back to something i said earlier of we don't always do a good job of setting up the individual of saying hey you know what you're an individual contributor right now here's the types of things that you need to be learning if you're going to be going towards a leadership track um and and here's the types of experiences that you will learn and then what happens is we have then this self-perpetuation of okay i get into leadership i might struggle but i might get to at least

17:35some base rate of effectiveness on the skills and then maybe i move up but it's still largely because of technical expertise or technical knowledge and then now i'm training the leader below me in those kind of same scar tissue or learning through experience and i'm i'm like painting a dire picture i know right now but i would say is there's a lot of great leaders that figure it out and it's you know it's kind of a flip a coin in some organizations um and in other organizations

18:06there's a much larger struggle i'd say that's where professionals and internal consultants like our teams and the teams have been on can really help because it reduces the failure rate i'm not saying it goes away but reduces some of that failure rate and and on the other side of that it increases and accelerates the speed to success so you know so a great leader doesn't have to go through maybe you know three four years of learning through kind of hard knocks and can maybe get to their

18:40highest effectiveness much quicker yeah and i assume then you know following on that that the the costs for the organization are pretty high when you know when there is a failure and so you know assuming you know that means that this work has a significant impact on the organization's uh bottom line their roi things like employee satisfaction engagement all of those kinds of things are probably impacted by the ability of leaders to to make this transition would you say that's true

19:12a hundred percent i mean it's and i would say one thing that i hear a lot in you know linkedin popular press is uh it's one aspect to talk about the the cost there's a certain cost for every person that turns over there's a certain cost for decreased productivity um a lot of that comes you know can be influenced by that leader there one of the one of the things though is that when you put that leader in it's the cost of the organization the cost of the team there is a very real cost to the

19:46person as well um the leader themselves and i think sometimes we lose lose sight of that uh of you know for better or for worse we don't always do a great job of explaining here's what leadership is here's what management is in this organization here's the expectations here's what we would like you to do um and you know here's the type of development that you need to be doing a lot of times it's congratulations you're the best you get put in a leadership position oh you're smart you're good at your job you'll figure it out and then what that does is it can really tear the person up

20:19because they're now facing something that maybe isn't as natural maybe they're not as good at when they've found success in the technical domain that can start to demotivate can start a cycle then and there's a very pernicious cycle that that i've seen i know some of my colleagues have seen in terms of you know getting that leader kind of either pulled out of that or in a role that is better suited for them you know kevin that reminds me i was working with one client who i was a particular individual

20:52actually at this client who they were considering for a managerial role and he was just sort of talking to me casually and he said well you know i think i'm about to get promoted to this managerial role and i said oh yeah did they tell you that you're going to promote you oh yeah yeah well you know i said well is that something you're interested in is that something you want to do you know to lead people and he said well i don't really care as long as they pay me more money and i thought i don't know if this is the if this is the right right approach you want to have for that i mean do you ever get that kind of thing in this work as well oh all the time all the time i'll share a story

21:26here to like to illustrate early on in my time at one of one of my roles we uh we implemented a new level of leadership below the manager the manager just had way too big spans of control to reasonably manage their people so we said okay we're going to put a new level of leadership underneath that layer and get down to hopefully a 25 to 1 span which is still very large but it was better than what we were at and we said okay that level of leader is going to be coaching and doing engagement and

22:00um uh growing their people and retaining the people and um doing all the people side of the house and they were our technical leaders as well and so they'd still have some technical work and direction in there and ryan to your point we we had all of these conversations with both the hiring managers and the individuals that are going in uh really dissecting okay well why do you want to be in this position and we we heard a lot of different aspects well i was a nurse lead and you know i want to uh

22:37and this is the the position that's next in line i've been in this position for a while so like kind of a 10-year reason there's the pay reason well there's a huge bump in pay um and then you know we had obviously quite a few people said well i love leading and i love um you know i want to be able to make change i want to be able to drive the unit forward and what really was interesting was all of those got surfaced because we put we actually put a pre-hire assessment in to place um and we were getting all of these interesting results that kept saying oh this person might find a

23:11leadership position really difficult and when we went back to the hiring managers with these assessments we wouldn't even show the assessments we would just say okay tell me about what you want to get out of this new position and they would describe it and they would you know tell us about it and then we would put the assessments down and we'd say okay here is what these assessments are telling us about your pool of candidates and just a look of shock on their face oh i know that's my person and you're saying that they scored you know the lowest on this this assessment and we said okay well tell us a

23:45little bit more why they're your favorite and the descriptions almost to a t where they're the best technical expert on the team and that was just like a light bulb moment for a lot of the hiring managers and what we were trying to do as a team of really stepping in and saying like this is different this role is different and we need to be intentional around the motivations and the ability and the potential of of who's going into that role so that was an example that came to mind as you're asking

24:18well i think this is a good segue into our next question because you know after reading through some of the literature that you've authored or co-authored on this topic you you've noted that technical leaders often rely on their their expert power that's kind of really what got them into that leadership position in the first place but also in your experience when do you think that expert power actually becomes more of a liability rather than an asset and how do you help how do you help communicate that to these leaders um you know once you once you realize that this is an issue

24:52yeah it's a great question and what a what i'd just like to start with is a lot of times the expert power is the foundation it's like what got them to the table right they got noticed because they can solve problems and they're they're experts and what comes along with that is a certain level of respect from their teammates from their peers that that person understands like what i'm doing as a technical person who's doing research or doing you know um you know delivering health care delivering um

25:26treatment things of that nature and so the kind of going back to that mindset shift the the trap or the liability that comes into place is not shedding the crutch of leaning on the technical expertise and so where it becomes a liability is is in a couple of areas i think one big one that comes to mind right away is the lack of delegation so how this can look or how this can sound kind of in practice is okay you know what i know how to do this better or i know how to do this and no one else can do it

26:01better than i can so i'm just going to do it and what that does then is you're in a leadership role and you're not allowing kind of that capability building underneath you in terms of growing the next generation growing or expanding the skills of those around you and it's burdening you as the leader because you are not you're spending time and effort away really from where your impact needs to be in that more strategic more visionary that next layer up aspect the other kind of derailing aspects

26:36of where it can come up is potentially hogging the spotlight in terms of you know i am the expert so i am going to be the voice whereas you know the higher that you move oftentimes that spotlight should be shifting to the other folks of how do i build not only you know we've been spending a lot of time of talking about from individual contributor to first time leader but this really can translate to going from a leader to a leader of leaders as well so how do i stop you know taking the spotlight because

27:06that's how i got noticed that's how i got kind of that seat at the table and then some of the other aspects that you know come out in my mind in terms of the the aspect of when does it become a liability um going back to the delegation aspect is also coaching you know we talk in coaching around coaching the person not the problem well it can almost be reversed when we over rely on some of that technical expertise we end up coaching the problem and not the person and so what that looks

27:37like is we're actually undercutting folks of building their own knowledge their own skills your own problem solving ability because the bet is there is that you could have three coaching sessions where you're really figuring out and empowering that person to own the problem and solution or you could have eight sessions where you're dictating and solving the problem for them and uh which one from a time perspective is more efficient and it's the first not the latter and so i'd say that's another liability

28:09area is is falling prey back into some of that problem solving and really the last aspect is um the narrowing or the continued to narrow and so you know i use the language of widening or you know breaking out of that domain expertise if we continue to be the technical expert and don't take the step of broadening out across the organization broadening those managerial skills the leadership skills sometimes what can happen is we stay very narrow in that uh that domain and what can happen then

28:46is that doesn't form the connective tissue oftentimes that's needed across the organization to get more strategic and more visionary projects and work done you know kevin one of the things that you mentioned a second ago struck me as psychologically a very important aspect of that that happens when we're transitioning from whether it's an individual control uh contributor role to a manager role or whether it's contributing from uh or moving from from a manager role to a manager or a leader of leaders kind

29:17of role uh is this uh is this value proposition that that we're offering right so one thing that can happen to us as individuals our identity can get tied up in the value that we provide right so we're working in an organization we are an individual contributor we are really productive we're seen as a highly productive member of the team and the things that we do whether whether whatever our technical expertise is in can feel like the value that i'm bringing and so when i get put in a new

29:50role it can be hard to let go of that previous aspect because little thoughts might creep into our heads like if they don't need me to do this then maybe they'll realize they don't need me at all right things like that i wonder to what extent there's sort of this ego defense or that it's really this identity protection that's going on when people hold on to it to those kinds of things what do you think about that yeah it's a great point and you know it's uh we see it we hear it and so you're absolutely

30:24correct in terms of um it's it's fascinating to see in the technical space ryan because that identity aspect is pretty entrenched you know i am an engineer i am a nurse and you know part of that is the professionalization of those types of roles and those types of areas that you do have this entangling and then all of a sudden you you essentially for lack of a better term lose that when you move up

30:54and the further you move up kind of the further you get away from the work that brought you into the field that got you success that got you noticed and i think it's a fair point to say yeah what is you know what's my value and i think i think that is where a lot of um you know the the leaders who are overseeing those transitions in the organization really play a critical part in shaping that new identity and moving from that individual contributor to leader from leader to leader of leaders and so

31:31on and so forth because without that you're really setting up for you know some psychological baggage that gets pulled forward um kind of from level to level you know kevin oftentimes and this is probably depending on the organization because not all organizations are really created equal when it comes to the amount of time effort and resources they devote to the development of leaders so what i'm

32:05saying is you know there's probably a lot of places and and oftentimes the technical leaders don't necessarily receive development of any kind until years into the role so what are some of the risks involved in waiting too long to begin the development process with these individuals yeah you know if you're if you're waiting to do leadership development once they hit formal leadership it's it's oftentimes too late um and then what happens and again this is through no fault of the organization uh or the individuals that

32:41are in it it's it's a very natural trend and i think we see it in a large part outside of the technical ranks i think it's there's certain aspects that we've talked about that are making it a little bit more entrenched in the technical ranks but what you get if you don't spend the time the energy and effort is what can happen is you perpetuate well technical expertise is incentivized so i have to be a technical expert and then i'm put into management and really again like we said flip a coin whether they're going to be effective or not

33:15and when they're going to be effective or not in terms of how fast that happens and then that cycle perpetuates because those individuals go up in level up in rank and become broader and broader leaders and so what you end up having is you know this this system oftentimes it's always interesting to me i've been in a number of organizations where they say oh well we don't we don't have leadership development we don't do leadership development and the reality is is that's like saying we don't have a culture

33:45um you know we don't have organizational culture and the reality is we know that we have culture you're doing leadership development whether you're doing it intentionally or not whether you're doing it systematically or not is a different story and so what could happen is uh you end up with these apprenticeship style development systems where you know the pipeline of leaders is really dependent upon the leader above them and the leader above that and and the tree and history

34:16organizationally of who is developing those leaders and that is where sometimes that works out really really well and you have a great leader who develops other great leaders other times it it it breeds some very toxic areas where you have a very toxic leader that can you know select and put into place and and really put other toxic leaders forward the real kind of takeaway that i would say is investing early

34:46in leadership development in an intentional way from an organizational standpoint will pay dividends down the line with that said that's not always the starting point of many leadership development programs many leadership development programs will start in the middle or will start at the top to set the context and the environment so that we can set up a pipeline and so what i'd say is if you're a leadership development expert or your technical leader that might be listening to this there's no right or wrong way to start but i would say is being intentional about it is the more

35:18important piece of really understanding well what are the development practices that are happening in my area already and then what are some ways that we can get more intentional around the type of paths and pathing to set leaders up from the individual contributor ranks so we have you know better leaders in the future

35:40kevin when you say i mean you started by saying that when a program might say okay let's start developing our leaders now but they're already in a leadership position you mentioned that that's too late by too late there you don't mean that there's no hope i think i think you mean that that you're going to regret that you didn't start sooner is that what you mean by that right yes absolutely absolutely yes

36:05i'm not like the great man theorist over here uh i firmly believe that um and and that is that is oftentimes i find like with myself and with other internal colleagues there's always this this this this tension of well where do we start like where do we start the efforts in terms of leader building a leadership development system and to your point ryan um one of the ways and and maybe we'll get

36:36to it in a different question but one of the ways in which um you know you might come in and say okay you know what we have we have some fundamental leadership things that are pretty variable across an organization so we're going to come in and we're going to match the leaders where they're at you know you might not know what coaching is you might not be familiar with how to coach you might not have good models of coaching and you might be really experienced and being really clear and

37:07intentional around hey we're not here to tell you that you're an awful leader or that you're a bad leader what we are here is to show you some some ways some some rigorous ways in which you could approach this differently fully realizing that you might be doing some of these things already here's some here's some refinement to that and even that i would say is such a win in a development standpoint of um you know matching and finding a leader who's experienced but giving them something new giving them that refinement and then you're going to see the impact of that and so no i i would say

37:43you know longer term if you think of your development system and you're really only focused on the formal leaders you're missing a chunk of basically the culture and the development arena that's feeding that system in a very important way you know kevin earlier you mentioned um an example of maybe how you would use assessments um i you you brought that up earlier whenever you were going to you know uh like kind of lay off candidates talk to

38:17the talk to the person who their favorite was and all that but let's get in a little bit deeper about the assessment side of things what role do they play in your leadership development work yeah i i

38:34love assessments um i've used many different types of assessments and different programs i would say um they fall in into some broad categories though and and they're probably categories that might be familiar to the listeners might not be but a big proponent of tying in 360s in some form or fashion especially with leaders and especially um and i would say matching the 360 with the level of leader and what i mean by that is that at certain levels leaders are going to be paying

39:09attention to different things there's going to be kind of different requirements and stressors and pressures on them at different levels it's different leading a you know a a frontline team than leading a you know a team of leaders to leading an entire area um so really pattern matching the 360 for the types of either behaviors or mindsets that they need to be having at that level is really important in terms of giving them the insight that they need to take action have used behaviorally based

39:42assessments have used personality based assessments um you know the the big thing with all of the development work and the assessments is it's always geared towards taking it and turning it into some sort of action whether that's housed in a development program so you know a couple of the development programs i've built over my career really intentional around upfront assessments and then they're pulled through in terms of hey we're talking about strategic thinking how you know does your understanding of

40:15your personality or how does the feedback from your 360 impact this topic for you okay now go do some homework or some field work we call it you know come back and we'll talk as a group in terms of okay well what'd you learn what insights did you gain you know what did you get from your assessments that helped or hindered you in your effort to practice x skill and so that's that's the way to really gear it towards the individual to coach them to seed it into the program to really form the connective tissue

40:47between what they're getting from a feedback source and then how it's translating into the things that they're learning in the classroom and what they're practicing out in their role and so that's a really important piece that you see successful programs are able to string that together in a in a very meaningful way that's kind of the individual aspect of using assessments that that i have experience with there's also an organizational component here is that once you hit a certain mass of people being

41:18assessed in an organization that is that's that's data for you as a professional as a team to be able to talk to leaders in a different way and so when you have a certain amount of leaders who have gone through a personality assessment and you get a sense of well here's some of their strengths here's some of their derailers here's some of their values you start to be able to see some of the incentive programs in the organization what they're you know prizing what they're looking for in leaders

41:51and it changes the conversation with the organization of saying hey here's what we're seeing pattern wise here's what this means from a communication standpoint here's what it means from a development standpoint here's what it means from a leadership as a practice and community in this organization what it looks like so those are kind of the two aspects that i am always on the lookout for is not only using it very tactically in the programs with the people whether that's coaching or practice or what have you and more strategically at the organization level of being able to talk to

42:22the leaders the organization in a very you know structured way in a very driven way and a lot of that comes back to you know using tools that have the science and rigor underneath them i think especially when you're in spaces that prize science and prize theory and rigor being able to match that with assessments that you can say yes here's the theory underlying it here's the rigor that goes into that

42:53here's how and where it can be used it's maybe not what i lead with but it's always something that i'm on the lookout for no matter the type of assessment i'm using is that i have to have a good good faith in it that i'm i'm able to defend it basically in a very meaningful way to scientists

43:15kevin that's what i would like to explore a little bit more with you is just about what what exactly you know how exactly do you run your program and this partly ties in with the previous question as well which was you know about how how you do the development there right so i mean most of what you've talked to us about today is sort of you know based on your experiences in multiple organizations but also just based on research and what the data suggests but i'm sort of curious what do you do in your program at mit lincoln labs now to help develop leaders i mean does it involve assessments at what point do you bring assessments

43:48in sort of operationally how does it work yeah it's a great question we um you know we we have some programs that um we have a you know a program that's focused on three it's a 360 plus coaching program um so that's that's its own program in terms of it's a long-standing program that we've had and and i think that was something that was very attractive when i came to mit is that they had some they had some really great foundational pieces already built here and this was a program that was

44:19very well regarded and very well used and so that one it really is about an upfront 360 based on the needs of the individual based on the level of the individual there's a lot of i would say consultation that happens between our team and the leader and the leader's leader of of what they're hoping to achieve and then what happens you know once they have the 360 is um uh they are paired with a coach for a certain amount of time where they execute a leadership development plan based on the feedback

44:52that they got from the 360. so that was that was a long-standing program we've used behavioral based assessments in some of our um you know more episodic leadership development programs so like a class will have an assessment component to it and then they anchor it and then recently we're piloting more of a cohort based program um where we we really went all out in terms of and it was up front they go through a 360 they go through a personality assessment they go through a behavioral assessment and really what

45:28this what this was intended to do was to give them as full of a picture as possible both from here's the behaviors that other people are seeing here's your you know self-ascribed behavioral tendencies here's that really deep level of the you know the reputational personality underneath that and you know the assessments were one aspect but we spent one-on-one time with them debriefing walking through their assessments connecting the dots for them pointing to where there was connection pieces

46:03and then from that we asked them in terms of to start to identify development areas and what that did then was it set the stage for coming into monthly sessions where they are interacting with their peers they're sharing these types of results they're using these types of results in the um in the topics that they're they're focused on and again what it does then is you'll see programs where they do the assessments up front where they just do assessments and then leaders will go through

46:34it and they say oh well that's interesting where the magic happens is really coming back to it of saying okay like no you're not going to just put the assessments away we're going to pull them back out we're going to talk about them we're going to reflect on it and there's a lot of specific practices that go into that to create one the awareness around the assessments and then taking that awareness and putting into practice whether it's hey you know what um i need to go have this really tough conversation or resolve this conflict between two team members and yeah sure in class we talked about

47:08the skills and we talked about the the ways in which we could do it but what what more broadly or how do i approach conflict what do i think about conflict how might i react under stress and by pairing kind of this practice and this reflection and with the deep assessment data there you start to hone in on really seeing some some strong growth in the leader because you have this cycle of you know reflect and do and reflect and do and that's built into the structure itself and supported

47:43by the assessment results

47:47well kevin now let's talk about some well we i guess we briefly touched on it earlier in the episode but i want to dig in a little bit further because this is what the c-suite or whatever the senior level leadership might be at xyz organization is really looking at and that's roi so how do you measure the impact and effectiveness of these programs i mean i i i'm i'm sure that at the end of the day the bottom line is what matters to a lot of these people and they might not necessarily be seeing the work that's going

48:19on so so can you can you walk us through that yeah uh i think this is always the grail of uh leadership development learning and development teams is uh what is the roi i you god we spend i want i recently saw some some statistic or some article out there of the many billions of dollars that we spend on development in organizations and okay well what do we what do we get for it

48:49what i'd say is i would love to have you know single measures of here's here's the return that you're getting what i'd say is for leadership development professionals this is always going to be dependent on the strategy that the c-suite is trying to achieve i have been in a in a interesting place you know blake you had said the bottom line um i've almost exclusively worked in non-profit types of

49:19organizations and it's not that the bottom line doesn't matter uh but it isn't i would say as front and center from you know there's no shareholders uh the dollars the way they talk about dollars is somewhat different um and that is that's an interesting wrinkle when you're interacting with a very mission-driven non-profit types of organization because the metrics and what's you know concerning can sometimes look a little bit different and so i would say like the big thing when it comes to

49:51leadership development and and we did this in many of my stops is having that needs assessment is so critical for whatever program you're driving so like i you know the the program i was just speaking to we spent three or four months running very in-depth interviews and focus groups with leaders across the levels and and what that did was it allowed us to tie here's the topics that we're

50:25hearing that are important and they're important because they're directly matched to things that are in the strategy from the c-suite and so i know that's like a little bit fuzzy in terms of of that aspect what i would say then is as those types of things emerge the topics and and what's important i would say the metrics that come along with that um you know that followed i've seen and we've used this in previous programs things like turnover rates engagement um we've uh used certain safety

51:01metrics um in the past we've used a leader effectiveness in the past in terms of increasing or decreasing and those are all good for the c-suite to know and see um but i would say that's that's kind of the the pollution of the data in terms of if you're not running experiments or things of that nature sometimes it can be it could be challenging to point to this program influenced this but i would

51:32say is you can largely start to say this is influencing this though the this increase in skill this increase here is boosting you know lowering turnover or boosting engagement and here's the dollar amount that comes along with that you know for example we found you know every nurse is forty thousand dollars in terms of cost of turnover well if you reduce turnover turnover by a small percentage due to leadership practices you're then talking about a cost reduction you know irrespective of the people

52:05the people impact as well that comes along with that and so in a very roundabout way i'm saying is it depends on the strategy of the c-suite taking the time to align and not just deliver something off the shelf not just pull in someone to deliver something but truly to understand what's the organization trying to achieve tying the practices to that and then figure you know aligning that then well what measurements are going to show that is it an increased partnership with an agency is it more

52:37money coming in is it lower turnover is it increased engagement scores that would lead to more x output whether that's you know research patient outcomes what have you i think that's kind of the the pattern that we typically or i typically our teams typically go after

52:56well you know kevin and thinking about this roi kind of question um you know i mean while i i do see why why that's important in in in the kind of respects that the the blake was asking about and you were talking about how you know it's a little bit different in your organization versus other organizations i i do think that we see at least this is what they tell us the organizations that we work with tell us that that they that they get the most effect out of those individualized kind of programs right the kinds that you were just mentioning there towards the end um and those are ones that are

53:31sort of tailored towards that individual person uh versus you know sort of out of the box uh leadership development programs now on the other hand i sort of feel like uh sort of those off the shelf you know open the box leadership development programs are probably useful at some of the time as well but they might be better for certain individuals that is instead of applying that program to all individuals maybe that program is right for these six or seven individuals but another program is the right program for these other individuals depending on their individual um development needs do you do

54:06anything like that or do you i mean what's your reaction to that yeah yeah we do and and you know they the reality there's a couple realities that you're surfacing there ryan is um the individual very hyper you know like the white glove development if you will um that isn't always scalable and not every organization will or can have the luxury of doing those types of things and so what i'd say is what i've found a lot of success with is having a mix of both um you know shelf stable if you will or vendor

54:44provided courses to set foundations to set um you know to scale it out very wide to the types of behaviors the types of capabilities that you're trying to build in the organization and using that as the foundation so if you think you know we've been talking about this but i don't think i've explicitly said if you think of that pipeline of leadership from individual contributor up through the organization where i see a lot of value is is aligning some of those off-the-shelf things out

55:17of the box things to offer and to build you know structured development programs around structured development opportunities and then as they advance up and my guess would be is the organizations you're working with you're when you're talking to a certain level of leader those foundations oftentimes they've either learned through experience they've gone through development programs they've interacted you know you start to individualize the more and more kind of as as they advance up into their

55:48careers and so there's absolutely a place and a purpose and a partnership and what i've found kind of in my programs in my career and the teams that i've had the opportunity to work with is a lot of times those out of the box or you know kind of set types of programs can spur a really interesting and good customization for your other levels of leadership so if you have vendor partners that you're working with or consultants that you're working with

56:19of you know taking some of that foundation and starting to link and build that connective tissue in and around the organization across the leadership levels so it might feel individualized it might be very specialized and it's predicated on this much broader you know what you consider more standardized development practice or approach

56:42you know for a lot of these new leaders who are technical experts and and you know ascended into this leadership role one of the there are a few of the things that they might have issues with are things like coaching listening and conflict management this might be actually foreign to these technical experts so what strategies have you found to be most effective in helping these leaders maybe build some confidence in these areas great question in terms of this this coaching and the listening and the conflict

57:14management it's it's something that i would say doesn't always come natural to many of us and when you're in kind of that high technical problem solving aspect or space i think it's especially pronounced there and i would say in terms of um strategies in helping build the confidence don't underestimate things like modeled scenarios that are true to the organization um role plays coaching um mentoring circles these types of

57:54environments what what they share is that they all share a container basically a safe container that the leader can explore the topic that they can maybe see the topic in practice and then they can you know either try it out in a low you know or reputationally less risky environment for themselves um and so you know i'll just take one of them for example modeled scenarios i've found in my my practice in terms of trying to figure out okay what what problems or what reality are the leaders

58:29facing like what conflicts are they facing you know what coaching conversations are they having so if we want to build the confidence of basically being able to translate here's what coaching is here's what coaching you know maybe isn't as much the science behind that here's what it looks like in our organization and then being having that translational modeled scenario for them to see and anchor oh well you know these two development professionals were showcasing or modeling or even better if you can

59:02get two leaders in the organization to do it are modeling what this looks like in good practice okay well now i i kind of see it but then the other aspect there is okay well then have them do it in the room have them role play itself get them talking to one another uh because it's one thing to think through oh yeah i would say this in the situation i would say this in the situation but actually having them do it and practice in ways that are real to their role is really important and so i'd say that's those are

59:33those are both tactics that i use pretty heavily in the development programs to translate good practice and whatever skill coaching listening conflict management to get out into the their role to get out onto the factory floor and so the other aspect to this is that if you have the opportunity where you have either you're building a community with the leaders or you have them in a cohort program or some some program basically that you're bringing them back after a certain amount of time taking the time for

1:00:09reflection at the start of that session um and then asking them explicitly to do something between the sessions and so for example like in our program we call it field work uh and and really the whole point is you're doing something out in your role and what we do then is you know we maybe talk about coaching tell them to go coach and then when we get back together we say okay we're going to spend the first x amount of minutes talking about what you tried over the past month what worked what didn't work let's share with one another as peers um to really uh pull pull up what practices are working where are

1:00:45the success stories and where are some of those hurdles and then using that to springboard then into further refinement further practice and in the space before kicking them back out into their role and so i think offering them those contained spaces helps the kind of confidence building if you will so it doesn't feel like oh i went to this class they told me about coaching maybe i practiced and maybe you know i saw it a little bit but now i have to go like really really practice in front of my my people

1:01:19and that can be somewhat challenging at times and somewhat nerve-wracking and so really if you if you take a step back and look at this we're easing that ramp of arming them with as much feedback and observation and modeling and and practice before they ever have to deploy it in real time if you will and then once they do deploy it of trying to get them back together to talk through it to share to support one another and that way you kind of build that community and and you see like oh well

1:01:53i'm not alone and uh you know i'm not alone and and having these types of conflicts i'm not alone in having these challenges around coaching and here's some examples or some some tactics that i can steal steal mimic or borrow from other leaders in the organization

1:02:09you know kevin i'm just still going back to the sort of the psychology of the individual who is is in this citizen area right some technical expert and they're being promoted to a leadership role and just thinking about why might they have resistance to things like coaching or or working on some of these other skills and it occurs to me that many people who are technical experts have backgrounds degrees in technical programs and probably given what we know about personality given what we know about interests they've long been interested in those kind of technical things and one of the interests

1:02:45that drives people towards technical things is the sort of well what we might call thing orientation versus a person orientation right and people with those interests tend to go to fields like mathematics i'm not surprisingly people mathematics engineering physics a lot of fields where um you just you get problems right i think about the typical math class right the typical math class from elementary school on you get your given problems you go solve them on your own right you need to go solve them as an

1:03:19individual whereas in other courses and other fields you may be given problems that you need to work together to solve right and it occurs to me that maybe right there's this whole line of interest this whole line of training and experiences around sort of being autonomous being self-reliant that creates this sort of resistance to coaching well you know or you can even have this attitude like well you know nobody really coached me um why do i spend my time coaching other people these people

1:03:50need to be self-reliant they need to be uh individuals like i am right i mean do you run into that sort of that sort of approach because it occurs to me that that would be a really common yes yeah i mean in short yes uh you know ryan to your point uh you know ryan to your point that that autonomy is so fascinating in this space um and especially especially when you're implementing

1:04:20enterprise-wide systems enterprise-wide development efforts things of that nature

1:04:27the change management that comes along with that oftentimes is something i i know at least you know i can speak to my own experience of um you don't necessarily realize or understand when you're going to grad school that the type of change management and i would say to your point like that autonomy factor can show up very heavily weighted and what can happen culturally when you see that is oh man hey you know we're going to try these coaching practices and it can be met with ambivalence

1:05:00and indifference resistance you know um at its worst hostility even in terms of well why are you forcing me why are you being prescriptive about something um you know that doesn't necessarily matter to me um and so we do see that in terms of and i think recognizing that and being able to speak to it as you know an internal consultant or a leadership development consultant is important um it's not always an easy message to talk to but pointing to some of the optionality that can come

1:05:33along with that some of the um you know behaviors that can come along with it that you observe in the classroom that you observe when you're interacting with these leaders is is really really important i think um as not just an io but anyone who's working really to level up or to transition technical experts into leadership and again i don't think that there's any malintent or maliciousness to your point it's um i don't know if it's always been seen as valuable uh you know to the the point

1:06:04that you made well i i succeeded you know i i got through this and so um there's a lot at times there is a lot of that well you're smart you'll figure it out you did well as a technical lead what's different uh and there's a there's a downplaying well there's a lot different um and when we don't say that there's a lot different we don't spend the time we we end up you know kind of suppressing it or hiding it well there must be something wrong if i don't figure this out because that's the opposite of it you know is there something wrong with me and that is you know talking about

1:06:38the psychological effects there that that can be very very challenging when you have these cultures of high autonomy um when in reality it's often it can be the system that's at fault or at play there as well well kevin this has been an awesome conversation but i do have one last question one that i would consider kind of the million dollar question uh for for our listeners and you know if you could give one piece of advice to io psychologists or technical leaders who are tasked with developing

1:07:09experts into leaders what would it be and why

1:07:17the the one i'm only limited to one blake you can do more well um no it the one

1:07:27the big one is is don't don't forget your science um i think that has always been something that i can rely on that i can lean back on is that as an io as a technical leader maybe that's you know working in this this area um you have a hundred plus years of research uh that you know we've talked about a number of the psychological constructs on here today but that is something that in in a

1:08:00technical space can often be a great differentiator there's a lot of of things out there in terms of how to develop leaders what to develop the best way to develop the five things you know that are going to be the most impactful none of that can really trump a mindset and an approach from a scientist is what i would say and so lean on the research lean on the academics who and the practitioners who are continuing to um you know produce translational research produce basic research and what i'm saying is don't you know

1:08:36necessarily come in and say well according to this theory x y and z but have that translational piece in the back of your mind of well here's what the science is saying here's what the results are saying you know in this arena and here's how i can apply it in my organization in this situation because what it does then is it can lead lend a great deal of credibility because when people then come forward and ask well why are you making this decision because that's that's a question you will

1:09:07get if you're implementing and building a leadership development system well why why this decision or why this topic or why why are you doing this you then have kind of the groundedness of saying well i did this because of x y and z and and this is the theory behind it this is the evidence that we have behind it and this is the choice that we made and i think that has always been something that has been impactful from for my own career and i've seen it in other ios who are in the space of um you know being able to have that scientific grounding tends to go a long way in these spaces

1:09:44well i couldn't agree more with that at all kevin so uh thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with us your experiences your knowledge and your expertise uh around building technical experts into today's uh today's leaders so uh really glad to have you on the episode on this podcast and for this episode so thanks for joining us well thank you for the opportunity thank you for the the conversation um and if you know if there are any follow-up questions i'm always happy to connect

1:10:18and share resources with other professionals in the space yeah kevin really appreciate it our audience is going to love this one and uh yeah we'll have to bring you on in the future we had a i think you had another proposed topic that we might have to entertain down the road sometime it's only if ryan will allow it we'll talk about it in new orleans and psyop so sounds good

1:10:43and that does it for the science of personality podcast episode 142 be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode cheers everybody this has been the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments you can access all episodes on our website thescienceofpersonality.com or on the streaming service of your choice see you next time