I was asked this question recently: how important is technical expertise for top-level executives? It’s a debate worth having, because the answer isn’t as obvious as it seems.
Proponents argue that leaders with deep domain knowledge make better strategic decisions. They can evaluate technical trade-offs firsthand, avoid being misled by subordinates or vendors, earn credibility with technical staff, and spot risks and opportunities that a generalist might miss. In today’s environment — where executives are being asked to lead their organizations through AI adoption — technical understanding seems more important than ever.
Critics see it differently. They argue that top leadership is fundamentally about setting vision, allocating resources, building coalitions, and managing people — skills that don’t necessarily correlate with technical mastery. Over-indexing on domain expertise, they warn, can lead to micromanagement, tunnel vision, or an inability to make broader strategic trade-offs.
So which view holds up? We decided to look at the data.
Importance and Overall Effectiveness
We examined results from 74,418 raters who evaluated leaders across a range of competencies. Technical expertise ranked as the 8th most important competency overall. But rank alone doesn’t tell the full story — the effectiveness gap is where it gets interesting.
Leaders who rated in the top quartile on technical expertise were rated at the 80th percentile in overall leadership effectiveness. Leaders in the bottom quartile on technical expertise fell to the 20th percentile. That’s a 60-point swing driven by a single competency — a substantial effect for something that, on the surface, ranks eighth in perceived importance.
The Employee Engagement Bonus
The impact isn’t limited to how leaders are perceived by their bosses or peers — it extends directly to the people they manage. Leaders in the top quartile on technical expertise had direct reports with engagement scores at the 65th percentile. Leaders in the bottom quartile had direct reports at the 36th percentile.
In other words, technical credibility doesn’t just make a leader look good on paper — it shapes how engaged their team actually is.
The Extra Benefits of Technical Expertise
Leaders rated more positively on technical expertise were also:
- More likely to be seen as role models who set a good example
- More trusted by others to use good judgment when making decisions
- More effective at making decisions under pressure
- Better able to balance risk and reward to maximize returns
- Able to make decisions and continually move the organization forward
- Better equipped to anticipate and respond quickly to change
The Real Skill Isn’t Technical — It’s Curiosity
I want to close with a contrast between two executives.
The first is a senior executive I once worked with who never learned to respond to his own email messages. Every message that came in went straight to his secretary, who read it to him, took down his reply, and typed it out on his behalf. He never adapted. He never tried. The technology wasn’t the barrier — his unwillingness to learn it was.
The second is my former partner, Jack Zenger, who passed away on July 3rd he was 94 years old.
As I look back on how Jack approached new technology, he did so with humility and a genuine optimism that he was capable of learning and mastering new skills, at any age. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen wave after wave of technology reshape how we work — from Zoom and Teams meetings to the rapid adoption of AI. Jack worked hard to stay on the cutting edge and never made excuses. The fundamental skills required to keep current, in his view, were curiosity and humility. He wasn’t afraid to ask for help, and he was always curious about what innovation was coming next.
Two executives, two very different relationships with technology — and, based on our data, two very different levels of effectiveness that are likely followed from it.
A few years ago, we measured leaders’ digital capacity and its impact on perceived effectiveness. Leaders who resisted learning and mastering digital skills were rated 28 points below average. Those who embraced digital skills were rated 17 points above average — a 45-point swing.
The key differentiator wasn’t intelligence or experience. It was curiosity and humility.
-Joe Folkman
*This distinction matters for how organizations think about technical expertise going forward: it’s not solely about what a leader already knows, but about their willingness to keep learning what they don’t.*
