Don’t Reinforce Your Technical Employees’ Stereotypes

The following is adapted from The Smartest Person in the Room by Christian Espinosa.

“He’s an expert on cybersecurity, but he can’t hold a conversation with clients to save his life.”

“She’s a numbers person, not a people person.”

“Don’t bother calling on him in the meeting, he doesn’t like speaking in front of a crowd.”

All too often, company leaders voice stereotypes like these about their technical people without weighing the impact of their words. Make no mistake, reinforcing stereotypes has a negative effect on your employees. It can inhibit their personal and professional growth, costing your company in productivity and even leaving it vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Coach Your Employees to Develop Both Technical and People Skills

There seems to be a longstanding myth — supported by the stereotype that technical folks are lousy with people — that individuals are either technically skilled or socially skilled, but not both. It’s an assertion that says intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) are mutually exclusive.

They aren’t, but it might require coaching from leadership to raise your technical employees’ EQ and develop their people skills. You’ll have to encourage your employees to break the stereotype and improve themselves; don’t assume they’ll do it on their own. After all, if our employees believe leadership thinks they’re incapable of learning something new, why should they try? They may have even internalized the stereotype and believe that it’s impossible to improve their social skills.

Make sure they know that they can have both high IQ and high EQ, and that improving their people skills will actually make them better at their technical job. We want our technical staff to develop their people skills so we can all work together more effectively to fight cybercrime. We don’t want to accept their skills for what they are — we want them to grow.

Why Do Technical Employees Need People Skills?

Maybe you’re thinking, do technical employees really need people skills to do their job?

The answer is a resounding yes.

Many technical people struggle with people skills because they’re often, at their cores, insecure. They are uncomfortable interacting with others because they fear the ambiguity that goes along with it. They crave certainty and prefer things to be either black or white; most can’t handle the shades of gray that come with human interaction and business politics rampant in large organizations.

But their job isn’t all computers and networks, ones and zeroes — they need to collaborate and communicate with others to protect your company’s information. If they can’t exchange information with others, they won’t know what vulnerabilities your system has. They won’t know the data needs of other departments. Ultimately, they will build a security solution that doesn’t match your company’s requirements.

Convince Technical Employees to Invest in Their People Skills

When you broach the subject of people skills with your technical employees, don’t be surprised if you receive some pushback. Again, this isn’t a comfortable subject for them. Technical people might tell leadership that it’s your job to deal with people so they don’t have to.

How do you respond to this?

There are many reasons you can share for why they should develop their people skills. First, ask them how many people they deal with on a continual basis. Are they in a relationship? Do they have parents or kids? Are those relationships flourishing? If not, they could benefit from improving their people skills.

People skills are applicable everywhere, not just the workplace. If you can get your technical staff to acknowledge the need for enhanced people skills at home, it might be easier for them to acknowledge those skills are needed at the office, too.

Encourage Professional Growth

It’s easy for your technical people to give in to the stereotypes and give up on developing their people skills. It’s much harder to put in the uncomfortable work required for professional growth. That’s why you should acknowledge and reward your employees for going outside their comfort zone.

None of us are born experts of anything. We aren’t born walking or talking. We have to learn each word and each step. And we need encouragement and acknowledgment along the way. In this way, you need to baby your employees a little as they do this difficult work. Clap for every major accomplishment along the way.

Acknowledging your technical employees’ accomplishments helps them build momentum. It keeps them from retreating to the safety of the stereotypes. Eventually, you’ll have employees who have high IQ and high EQ. You can say, completely honestly, “He’s great with cybersecurity, and he can lead a meeting with clients.”

When this happens and you have well-rounded, talented technical people protecting your company’s data, your entire business wins.

For more advice on managing an effective technical team, you can find The Smartest Person in the Room on Amazon.

Christian Espinosa is the Founder and CEO of Alpine Security, a cybersecurity engineer, certified high-performance coach, professor, and lover of heavy metal music and spicy food. He’s also an Air Force veteran and Ironman triathlete. He used to value being the “smartest guy in the room,” only to realize that his greatest contribution to the fight against cybercrime is his ability to bring awareness to the issue through effective communication. Christian is a speaker, coach, and trainer in the Secure methodology, helping to make the smartest people in the room the best leaders in the field. For more information, visit www.christianespinosa.com.