Being an effective and influential business leader is challenging, especially for those new to it, but being an influential technical business leader is even more challenging. These leaders are responsible for taking teams to the next level, knowing how to push them to become the best versions of themselves. Technical leaders need strong communication skills, a deep understanding of business and people, and technical experience. So, how can you become an influential technical leader?
Both managers and business leaders aim to ensure their teams or employees achieve specific goals. However, how they go about it is very different. Managers control, while leaders enable, motivate, inspire, and influence employees and colleagues to achieve set goals. While managers rely on power and control, leaders depend on inspiration and influence to get things done.
Technical business leaders understand that the more influence they have on people, the more they will be inspired, leading to better outcomes. You become an influential leader if you can inspire people enough to follow you.
Technical business leaders understand that even though leadership and management are different, they need both depending on specific situations and circumstances. Finding a balance between the two is, therefore, critical.
Inspiring and leading hinges on a leader's ability to communicate effectively with their team. Technical leaders can only become influential if they communicate effectively, which is why being a great communicator is so important.
Face-to-face conversations are the best for improving communication, but they can often involve personal feelings that make such conversations challenging. Navigating these feelings requires technical leaders with enough emotional intelligence.
Technical leaders can sign up for effective leadership training that teaches them how to balance their heart and head when having difficult conversations with employees and making important decisions from the outcome of these conversations.
Finding this balance allows technical leaders to add a human element to the conversation while also making the right decisions devoid of emotions for the betterment of the business.
The best technical leaders help their teams wherever they can. They present themselves as problem solvers who are available to help teams wherever and however they can. Doing this is another component of being inspirational.
Teams should be able to seek you out and look up to you to provide help whenever needed. Remember that a team's performance reflects its leadership's performance. Ensuring your team produces quality work requires that influential leaders are never too busy for them.
As with communicating, know when to step in and when to step back so individuals in your teams can also enjoy the spotlight that comes with outshining themselves.
People and team members trust influential business leaders, and this trust grows out of transparency. Transparency should be a common trait throughout teams, and it is up to the leader to promote this transparency.
Influential leaders do not hide things from their followers as they trust their followers can handle them. It is common to want to hide things due to wanting to be perceived positively and fearing people's reactions. Influential technical leaders do not think like this, instead, understand how doing so could erode trust and compromise the bonds they have formed between themselves and their followers.
Many leaders make the mistake of thinking only their ideas are good enough. Such thinking hinders team members from voicing opinions, pitching ideas, or suggesting alternative solutions to an issue the team might face. If you do this, you will be hobbling your team while hindering creativity, communication, and collaboration.
Instead of doing this, influential tech leaders give team members autonomy and let ideas flow. Allowing team members to discuss ideas like this benefits everyone, including the leader and the business.
Technical leadership is not as challenging as many people think. Being knowledgeable, having social skills, knowing how to lead, and having the social skills to influence and inspire people is vital to being an influential technical business leader.
