For what it’s worth from my time as a civil servant, I agree:
You can train a technical person to have leadership skills. It’s difficult, but it’s doable. It involves a lot of throwing them at escalating levels of leadership opportunities (starting really really small if necessary) and making sure they get and respond to relevant feedback about their performance. This is something that can be done in the normal course of working at an organisation.
You cannot train a non-technical leader to have technical skills. 90% of the population don’t have a maths A-level (or equivalent qualification), and people often find the process of learning maths inherently distressing. At least half the time the response I get when telling people I am a mathematics researcher is people bringing up their anxiety-ridden GCSE school days. There is nothing that can possibly be done to fix this from an organisation’s perspective other than telling them to go and study something they hate for five years full-time in the hope they somehow stick with it, which organisations cannot support.
So from the view of a talent pipeline aiming for technical leaders in your field or community, it makes sense to recruit technical and teach leadership. There are occasionally people who jump the opposite way, and it’s great to be on the lookout for them and have something they can do. But initially it’s going to look very much like either the introductory outreach course in your field or the maths A-level curriculum, both of which are catered for outside of a specialised programme. And my experience is the kind of people who do MBAs don’t stick with this kind of stuff because they find it hard, boring, anxiety-inducing, and not prestigious enough.
I did maths teaching for non-technical people learning technical skills at an EA org once. I teach maths at university level with great feedback, so I don’t think the issue is me. They messed up the basics (as expected), but were totally unable to reflect on why they’d messed up in a way suitable for learning, and all dropped out. I’d need a serious example of such a talent pipeline actually working before I’d do such a thing again.
Thanks for this! You’ve changed my mind
For what it’s worth from my time as a civil servant, I agree:
You can train a technical person to have leadership skills. It’s difficult, but it’s doable. It involves a lot of throwing them at escalating levels of leadership opportunities (starting really really small if necessary) and making sure they get and respond to relevant feedback about their performance. This is something that can be done in the normal course of working at an organisation.
You cannot train a non-technical leader to have technical skills. 90% of the population don’t have a maths A-level (or equivalent qualification), and people often find the process of learning maths inherently distressing. At least half the time the response I get when telling people I am a mathematics researcher is people bringing up their anxiety-ridden GCSE school days. There is nothing that can possibly be done to fix this from an organisation’s perspective other than telling them to go and study something they hate for five years full-time in the hope they somehow stick with it, which organisations cannot support.
So from the view of a talent pipeline aiming for technical leaders in your field or community, it makes sense to recruit technical and teach leadership. There are occasionally people who jump the opposite way, and it’s great to be on the lookout for them and have something they can do. But initially it’s going to look very much like either the introductory outreach course in your field or the maths A-level curriculum, both of which are catered for outside of a specialised programme. And my experience is the kind of people who do MBAs don’t stick with this kind of stuff because they find it hard, boring, anxiety-inducing, and not prestigious enough.
I did maths teaching for non-technical people learning technical skills at an EA org once. I teach maths at university level with great feedback, so I don’t think the issue is me. They messed up the basics (as expected), but were totally unable to reflect on why they’d messed up in a way suitable for learning, and all dropped out. I’d need a serious example of such a talent pipeline actually working before I’d do such a thing again.