Are you a leader or manager in technology?  Do you ever struggle with getting the most out of your technology experts?

Technology experts vary widely in personality. Some are ‘geek lite’ or you may be facing a team that prides themselves as ‘uber geeks,’ or you may have others who are not ‘technical’ but very process oriented. As different as they may appear, my extensive research in leading tech experts has uncovered a layer of uniting characteristics. When you understand what motivates and makes them tick, you have the power to truly transform a group of disjointed techies into a team that works together to accomplish organizational and personal goals.

I have worked with a host of technology experts and many tend to be creative, impatient, perfectionists who may sit through meetings while silently disagreeing or vehemently arguing to the point of distracting others. Many often disappear in their offices for days or months at a time. Many have a tendency to be arrogant – and yes, because they know they are smart – and they probably are – maybe smarter than you and your customers – but they don’t know how to mask their disdain for those who don’t have the same skills.

How do you get the best out of them? How do you tap into their minds and guide them to greater contribution?

#1 Ask questions based on knowing how your people think, learn and solve problems.
Every leadership program tells you to ask questions and listen to your employees. Your employees are more likely to feel engaged when you listen to them and incorporate their ideas. You and your chatty employees can go on forever with tangential ideas. But your tech experts are not always so verbal. They typically operationalize and organize questions with parts of their brain that may process or visualize solutions, but it doesn’t include the language cortex.

So, you may ask your techie a question to engage him or her, and it lands on the floor. You both sit in silence until you give up and start talking again. Many people who have specialized in technical areas tend to be inner processers. Managers often get frustrated that they only get monosyllabic responses from their direct reports, so they resort back to giving directives or not even including them in work.

Look into the minds of your tech experts. Do they love to solve games, puzzles and problems? If so, they need to be given content and context. Many love music and often work to music. Try giving them a case study or a 3D model to use in the process. Turn your questions into puzzles or cliff hangers. Technology experts need to have their brains engaged to be interested.  Tie it to the bigger issue on the team or the project.  Technology experts usually prefer solving problems on their own. My research shows that people tend to solve problems in solitude twice as often as in groups. So, send them away with a question or a problem to solve within a clear timespan.

#2 Timing is everything.
Our most productive times are related to our biorhythms – everyone is different. Our brains are more productive for certain tasks at different times of the day. Administrative duties may happen at times when certain hormones are elevated in the bloodstream and you feel calmer to approach those deadly details. Processing quality issues or double-checking system errors may come easier at the height of the day when others are around for support. Some people are early risers and ready to crash by two in the afternoon while others are just getting started late in the day.

Find out when your experts are most productive and on which tasks. Have them keep a simple log of their basic tasks such as programming, scheduling, fixing software bugs, talking to internal customers, or writing documentation. Have them track when their energy peaks and wanes over a two-week period for each of those tasks. I give my clients an easy approach using a 1-10 scale for tracking energy. Then create a pattern identification for each of your experts and assign tasks to be done during their peak hours. They will thank you. If you have an entire team working at their individual peak hours, they will accomplish so much more. This may take more from you for the upfront work but if you are managing for peak performance you will find that your organizational results are higher and your people are more engaged.
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#3 Provide clear direction.
Technology experts often prefer orderly, consistent direction. When there is a breakdown in communication, there is a productivity drag. Experts do not want to be micromanaged, but they need clarity and accountability to stay engaged with their work. One of my clients said, “My boss is great and lets me run with things, but he never follows up. He changes direction all the time based on the latest thing he has signed up our department for. So I know I can let things go and he won’t check. I’ve learned to procrastinate on certain things.” This may not sound unusual to human behavior in general, but in technology, it creates a real stop-start mentality.

In personality assessments, many tech experts wait on managers to tell them which direction to go. They are perfectionists and want to do their work right – the first time. They hate repeating unnecessary steps. So if you don’t give them clear direction or someone does not get back with them about a question they pose, they are likely to wait. Also, tech environments are usually fast paced. There are often too many projects, too many constituents involved, and too few resources. The environment is ripe for poor clarity and tech experts often feel like they are at the behest of others, and become reticent.

#4 Require, budget and follow up on learning.
The most important aspect of a leader’s job is to build capability and capacity in the organization to meet the needs and growth of the business. As tech organizations continue to change rapidly, the need for added capability of human talent grows. Additionally, technology experts are always on a constant learning trajectory. They continually have new tools for completing their jobs and competing for business. The complexity of their knowledge has to grow to keep up, keep current, and keep ahead. Because they are inclined to work alone or in silos, it takes constant vigilance to ensure your experts are learning for the betterment of the organization and their own growth. And don’t forget that their natural desire for learning will become quickly frustrated if the organization doesn’t provide those opportunities.

As a manager or leader, it’s easy to let the discipline of learning slip through the cracks and fall at the bottom of the to-do list. With deadlines, calls from the C-Suite, strategy changes, and budget issues, learning often has to happen as it happens. Don’t assume that because technology is a natural habitat for learning, your experts will quickly and easily absorb what is needed. Instead, you must set the budget for learning so that everyone knows they have resources to learn. When you engage your experts, you ensure they are actually taking advantage of the learning opportunities. Make sure you do spot checks with your people on an informal basis – it will make all the difference for them to know you are behind their growth, not to mention enforce accountability.

#5 Reinforce that they matter – but you need to know them first.
This matters. Have informal conversations, ask about personal things from time to time, and get interested in your employees as whole people. It is amazing how infrequently managers of technology organizations engage in these conversations with their direct reports. That’s because usually leaders in tech organizations are tech-minded themselves. Usually a tech manager has advanced in the organization because they are great at what they do – but they’re may much of a “people person. There’s a good chance they are introverted and manage several other introverts. This leads to little conversation or discussion outside of the required tasks that need to be done. Your technology experts may sit at their computers all day with little interaction on a personal level. And while they appear to be content because of their general quiet nature, then surprise, when the Employee Opinion Survey comes out, they give a low rating to “feel like I belong.” It sounds so simple, but it is surprising how infrequently personal conversations happen.

As a manager in an IT security organization put it, “My people may act like robots, but they’re anything but that. They need to be pulled in – but it has to be real and authentic. I ask them about their families and their lives and their aspirations. They will do anything for me because I treat them like humans.” It seems like a natural thing to do, but many managers know very little about the people who report to them.

As a leadership and executive coach, I often give my clients assignments to really get to know their people. I suggest that they start out with a simple, natural environment for talking – maybe a lunch or breakfast once a month. One organization calls it “Leaders Listen” but it can also be more informally approached. Why not take your whole group out for a team event, but don’t expect them to easily share about their personal lives in that setting. Have those conversations one-on-one because introverts are more likely to open up that way. You could have them take a personality assessment your organization provides, and then talk to them about their results. It is data they can look at and respond to. They are often fascinated by it. Especially with the younger team members, get interested on a more personal level (that’s the relational culture they are more used to.)

Knowing your technical experts is a profound way is the first step to let them know they matter to you and to the organization. It’s more critical in IT organizations than others because it’s a business sector that attracts brilliant minds. The challenge for tech organizations is knowing how to better understand how they think and what will work best to encourage better performance and engagement.