The road to becoming a great technical leader

Today, CTOs need to be innovators, risk-takers and visionaries, and possess dynamic decision-making skills.

In high-tech companies, technical leadership plays a key role in a company’s success. In the past, CTOs were focused on ensuring businesses had the right IT environment to succeed. Today, CTOs need to be innovators, risk-takers and visionaries, and possess dynamic decision-making skills.

An excellent technical leader also needs to be someone who can effectively pair business objectives with technical solutions. They are essentially the bridge connecting a business’ technology to their people. To do that, they must have the right skills to create the right technical strategy that serves their company’s purpose.

Developing the right skills

The best technical leaders can distil highly-technical concepts to business leaders in a succinct and impactful way. They need to be able to inspire the business leaders to support them on their journey towards digital transformation and innovation. Essentially, the CTO needs to be an effective combination of a technical genius and a business leader.

My leadership style has been formed by the leaders that I’ve been fortunate to work with throughout my career. I’m incredibly grateful to those leaders for teaching me the value of clarity, dependability, integrity, passion and perseverance. It’s important to have these human skills as a technical leader to set-up a personal environment for success.

To me, a great leader never stops learning and constantly inspires their team to strive to be the best they can be. Excellent communication skills and the ability to tailor communication styles based on their audience are key in delivering clear and effective messages.

Andrea Breen

Regional Director at Objective Corporation

To me, a great leader never stops learning and constantly inspires their team to strive to be the best they can be. Excellent communication skills and the ability to tailor communication styles based on their audience are key in delivering clear and effective messages.

They need to have the ability to get their teams working on their goals and objectives while also listening to their needs. By having these conceptual and communicative skills, technical leaders can help their people find solutions faster as well as improve workflows and productivity.

How Objective supports the technical leaders of tomorrow

Objective promotes and supports innovation through all facets of our business. All of our employees are encouraged to present on ideas and concepts, regardless of their role.

We also run regular innovation sessions where individuals or teams can present on any idea of their choice. Many of the concepts that are presented in these sessions are also available to our global network of clients to see and learn. We’re passionate about working with great people and believe that through teamwork and openly sharing knowledge, we’re able to deliver amazing results.

Interested in joining an innovative high-tech company? Check out our job listings and be part of a team that helps grow your technical leadership skills.