The second article in the three-part series, “The Business Case for T-Shaped Leaders – Why Your Company Needs Them” will explore why universities and corporations are in the early stages of building T-shaped curriculum into their leadership development programs. First, a short review of the T-shaped leadership concept.

The Need for T-shaped Leaders

For decades, organizations have built one dimensional workers. Global and regional competition has forced companies to narrow their recruiting and internal development efforts toward knowledge workers with deeper, more specialized “hard skills.” This exclusive focus on hard skills has created a glut of one dimensional I- shaped employees. Research has shown that on average 50 percent of I-shaped workers promoted into IT leadership roles fail due to their lack of “top of T” cognitive, management and soft skill leadership competencies. Companies with flat management structures and teams empowered to make real time critical decisions require leaders with well-developed soft skills to perform at a competitive level. A challenge is that leadership specific skills/competencies will vary by industry and cannot be event trained or simply acquired over a few weeks on the job. Future leaders will need more personalized guidance from human resources, mentors and peers to prioritize the development of their critical career path competencies as their “top of T” reach expands outward. Developing a T-shaped leadership program is a flexible, common sense approach to transforming one-dimensional knowledge workers into multi-dimensional leaders.

Growth of the T-shaped Leader in Academia:

Developing T-shaped leaders is no longer a theory. It’s becoming an active investment in the future of corporate leadership. Kim Crider, CIO and executive IT consultant at Harvard University, helped to develop an entire curriculum entitled the IT Academy solely dedicated to T-shaped courses for emerging IT professionals. Dr. Phil Gardner and Linda Gross of Michigan State University have been at the forefront of T-shaped leadership development for years. Dr. Jim Spohrer of IBM Global University is dedicated to exploring and developing practical models for T-shaped leadership for the IT industry.

The Hot Topic at Conferences:

National conferences with human capital development on their radar are now including T-shaped thought leadership panel discussions in their agendas. T Summit 2016 is an annual conference solely dedicated to the subject and future makeup of the T-shaped professional. T-shapeness, in all its forms and facets, has the ability to expand beyond the IT industry. It can bridge a new standard by which most 21st century knowledge workers will be hired, developed, measured, assessed and promoted. The discipline is already being explored by market leaders and will be a requirement for all human resource departments wishing to win the emerging battle for talent.

Fig. 1.2a  T-shaped leader model (future articles will discuss specific anchor soft skill competencies and defined models for T shaped leadership development).

Balancing “I” Skills with “T” Competencies

Hiring knowledge experts with deep skills sets can be a key competitive advantage in today’s global economy, but it does nothing to prepare those experts as resources who can close the talent leadership gap. The problem lies with balance, leaving the development of business soft skills or “top of T” competencies almost entirely up to the individual. In general, high performance global HR business units are aware and working on the talent leadership gap, but most of today’s knowledge workers are left to fend for themselves on their journey to becoming well-rounded effective leaders. T-shaped leadership is still in the early stages of development, even within the IT industry. In order to stay competitive, continuous learning will be required at each functional level of a company.

What is the Industry as a Whole Telling Us?

Challenges with leadership resources are now a top priority on the C-suite agenda. The ancillary derivatives and unwanted outputs of weak leadership are obvious (low profitability and productivity, high turnover, increased safety incidents, absenteeism, theft and toxic culture), but the most prevalent negative is centered around a problem that is sapping more than $300 billion a year in lost revenues: workforce engagement. Take for example the hard data and large scale poles on engagement across corporate America. There needs to be a better way to re-engage and develop effective leaders. An even more frightening statistic is that among all the currently active generations ready to serve in a leadership capacity, millennials and Gen X’ers are the least engaged.

Future Leaders:  Ready to Build their T

The good news is that today’s workers are asking for help. They just need their parent companies to take the lead and provide an effective format for leadership development.  The next article on will summarize T-shapeness as a solution to address the talent leadership gap.

Thomas E. Stone is the CEO of Stone Business Professionals. David Mantica is the president of ASPE. Mike Eason is the CTO of The American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography.