One of the perks of serving at an Harvard alumni club (I am currently the Secretary of the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Worcester), was attending a 2-day Alumni Leadership Conference in Cambridge, MA. It was a nice break from work. I met alumni leaders from all over the world, talked to accomplished people (I met the writer of one of my daughter’s favorite movies – Kung Fu Panda), learned what’s new in the Harvard world, and learned leadership skills from great speakers.

One of those speakers is David Ager, a faculty member at the Harvard Business School. He totally engaged the audience while delivering his opening address – “Leadership of High Performing Talent: A Case Study.” We discussed a case study about Rob Parson, a superstar performer in the financial industry. In a nutshell, Rob Parson delivered significant revenue to the company but his abrasive character and non-teamwork attitude didn’t fit well into the culture of the company. He was due for performance review and the question was – Should Rob be promoted?

The setting of the case study was in the financial industry, but the lesson holds true as well in the Information Techology (IT) industry. There are a lot of Rob Parson in IT – software developers, architects, analysts, programmers – who are high performers, but they rub other people the wrong way. They are intelligent, smart, and they develop very sophisticated software — the bread and butter of IT companies. Some of these IT superstars aspire for promotion for managerial role. Should they be promoted? Too often we hear stories about a great software architect who went to manage people, but faltered as a result.

IT professionals who would really like to manage people should be carefully evaluated for their potential. They should learn people and business skills in order to succeed. Before giving them any managerial position, they should undergo a development program and they should be under a guidance of a mentor (or a coach) for at least a year. Most IT professionals should not take on the managerial role. They should remain on their technical role to be productive, but they should be given other incentives that motivate and make them happy – such as complete authority of their work, flex time, an environment that foster creativity and so on.