A Gameplan for Leadership Development

Written by Perry Rotella

The veteran CIO offers a guide for developing strong leaders in the IT organization.

During his tenure as CIO of Moody’s, and now as IT chief at Verisk Analytics, Perry Rotella has always looked to build strong leadership development programs for his staff. But like most sharp IT leaders, Rotella goes way beyond just strengthening technical skills—he emphasizes growth in crucial leadership qualities like communicating, motivating and goal-setting.

He spoke recently with Brian P. Watson, Director of Business Outreach for WOS, about his leadership development philosophy:

What are the key elements you try to instill in these leadership development programs?

Rotella: The first is self-awareness—understanding yourself and how your team members interact with each other.

The program I’ve used over the years is one where people learn over time applying their day-to-day experiences to the leadership content. It’s not a one-day seminar or presentation—it’s a 10-week program where people take the lessons they learn and put them into practice. That’s important. You don’t grow leaders by sending them to a one-day training class.

I’ve worked with the same firm, Academy Leadership, for the last eight years. I have used two of their offerings:

1. Focus and Alignment Workshop. I’ve brought them in for this when I have a new team. In this workshop, we put together our purpose as an organization, our values, and our vision, and then the first steps we’ll take to achieve that vision, and how we’ll measure our progress. That’s the first step in leadership development—you have to know where you’re going before you can get there.

2. 10-Week Leadership Development Program. The first session kicks off with each person writing their personal leadership philosophy—a one-page statement of beliefs and personal values, even your pet peeves. This gives co-workers insight into who you are and your expectations of them as a direct report. We all write a personal leadership philosophy, which is an awesome exercise.

Beyond that, the program ranges the spectrum—from communicating as a leader, to goal setting, motivating people, building teams and trust, leading change, conflict management, and coaching. It hits all the significant areas of leadership.

The one thing IT people can learn above all else in this program is communication, and particularly how to communicate as a leader. A lot of us grew up as technicians. I work with a lot of smart people, but they’ve never had to communicate from that leadership perspective. Learning how to do that is a skill, which I would argue anyone can do.

Which of these skills do IT pros struggle with the most? Communication?

Yes, I think communication is No. 1. From something very strategic, like defining our purpose, we need to give direction and guidance to our people. We don’t do such a good job there—from there down to the tactical, like day-to-day feedback and coaching.

What other hurdles exist for IT pros in attaining these leadership qualities?

It’s not just in IT, but people struggle with coaching. We need to understand a person’s abilities and limitations, their potential and goals. That’s when you become a coach. Coaching is not about giving feedback on a specific incident—it’s sitting people down who work for you with the goal of having them learn something.

A lot of the time, we give feedback, but we don’t “own it.” People try to dance around it—they’re not as direct. I think we can teach people to be more direct in their feedback. It should be, “ This is coming directly from me,” and not, “This is what I’ve heard.”

I expect people to make mistakes. If we’re not making mistakes, we’re not pushing like we should. But you don’t want to make the same mistake over and over. I’d rather a person take some initiative and make a mistake than to sit back and wait for someone to tell them what to do.

What milestones do you look for to see that someone is reaching this leadership potential?

Leadership, to me, is about taking action and getting results. In my experience, you see people take action and drive toward results, and that’s very satisfying. I don’t need to push people—I can give general guidance and direction, but when you see people run off and make it happen, you know they’re demonstrating the level of leadership that’s needed.

You need to pull some people along. Some people need constant attention to get the job done. They may be very capable, but it’s people who step up and take the initiative—and get results—that make for great leaders. And that’s what we’re shooting for.

How do you decide who goes into leadership development programs? Do you put lower-level workers through them?

When I was at Moody’s, I started with myself and my direct reports. Then I worked down two levels of managers. All in all, it was the 65 most senior people in my IT organization.

Along the way, part of the program is for each person to sit down with their reports and coach them. People observe what you do as their leader. If I’m one of the second-level managers and I’m sitting with my team in a coaching session, I’m laying out our vision and the goals we need to achieve, and people are going to learn from that. Once you get down to the individual contributor level, they see leadership in their manager, and they learn from that leadership.

Before I left Moody’s, we were trying to come up with a shorter version (of the program) so that everyone would have the same leadership vocabulary. Instead of doing a 10-week program, we wanted to condense it. People will learn from their managers. You learn a lot from the people you most admired at work.

Now, at Verisk, all 300-plus people who work in my organization have read my leadership philosophy. And my managers have written theirs, and their people read them and learn from them. It takes time, but it helps everyone in the organization.