How to build frontline leaders at technical organizations

Matt Gjertsen (00:00):
You need leaders who understand the problems and the technical challenges that a company is facing that can figure out where the puck is going rather than where it’s been. And so I think that’s the thing that we’re not talking enough about it, but how important it is to enable these people to lead these companies if we want them to be successful.

Hannah Beaver (00:23):
You are listening to How To Make a Leader, a leadership development podcast from Big Think+ where we take the best ideas from the biggest minds in learning and development and distill them into actionable insights. I’m your host, Hannah Beaver. Today’s guest is Matt Gjertsen. Matt has really seen it all when it comes to working in multiple environments all the way from the cockpit, from his time in the Air Force to training engineers at SpaceX surrounded by rockets, and now to present day where he runs Better Every Day Studios working with aerospace and technology companies on their leadership development programs. In the upcoming conversation, we talk about the nuances of building frontline leaders, specifically in technical organizations. He shares some of the specific challenges and strengths that technical folks face in their leadership journeys and how to solve them, as well as how to get learners and the exec team engaged and on board with these types of programs. Matt, welcome to How to Make a Leader podcast.

Matt Gjertsen (01:34):
Hannah, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited.

Hannah Beaver (01:38):
Matt and I have actually met in person at the ATD Conference back in May, so it’s always very exciting to continue the conversation, although it would be exciting in person, but to continue that conversation virtually. So excited to see where we go today with this convo.

Matt Gjertsen (01:54):
Yeah, I’m excited and I’m so glad I got to meet you there. You did such a great job of, I think that was the first live session you did with Suzy Welch. It was absolutely amazing. So thank you so much. I’m glad I got to be a part of that. And then thank you for having me on today.

Hannah Beaver (02:09):
Of course. Well, why don’t we just start with the basic question. Why are we here today? What is the issue that we’re talking about? I know you spent the last 15 years developing leaders specifically within the technical industries, so why are we talking about this right now?

Matt Gjertsen (02:27):
Yeah, it’s interesting. I feel like it’s like a niche of a niche. It’s not just that we’re talking about developing leaders, which everybody always talks about. But yeah, I’ve decided to kind of focus my life on this challenge of developing leaders specifically in technical organizations. And there’s a few things to unpack there as we dive into the challenge. I often get asked what do I mean by technical leaders or technical organizations, not just talking about engineers. This can cover a lot of things, but there’s lots of terms for it. I think one of the favorite terms or favorite terms these days is Hard Tech or Deep Tech because when you say technology, very often you’re thinking of software companies and that’s been happening for a long time. But I think the thing that I really like to focus on is more the hardware companies. So these are aerospace companies, defense companies, manufacturing companies.

(03:21):
They have an extremely diverse workforce where they have people who have gone to college for a decade getting PhDs in these really advanced fields, and they also have technicians without a high school degree who have been welders for the last 25 years. And both of those people are instrumental in their success. And the reason why I really like focusing on this are, there’s twofold. One is there is the long-term fact that a lot of technology struggles to scale. I think there’s an old quote that said, I forget who it’s from. It says the future is here. It’s just unevenly distributed. And when I was at SpaceX, I very much got to see that SpaceX was having a Halloween party. And so I’m standing there with my daughter and there was the Hyperloop Test Chamber was across the street. This is crazy. And the truth is we have solutions to so many of the problems that we have in the world, but we need to scale them.

(04:23):
And I think one of the challenges with scale, it’s very often not a technical problem, it’s a people problem. It’s how do we get larger and larger groups of people to work together effectively? How do we transition our people who were really great at the blackboard solving these technical problems, how do we turn them into leaders so that we can continue to scale? That’s why I like to focus on this problem, and at least here in the US especially, we’re seeing a resurgence of this right now of a really big focus in the trades, a really big focus on reindustrialization and then globally when we’re talking about transitioning the economy to a greener economy, to one that can continue to grow while still protecting the environment. I’ve heard stats here in the US where we need like 50,000 electricians over the next decade. We just need dramatically more. So all of these technical companies need to scale dramatically and we need leaders in order to do that.

Hannah Beaver (05:23):
Is there anything that we’re not talking about enough when it comes to leadership development specifically in these technical industries?

Matt Gjertsen (05:30):
I think there’s a few things that we miss. One is the critical importance of allowing the technical people to become leaders. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you have to be technical to be successful as a leader in a technical company. There are examples of people where it works, but there’s also lots of examples where it doesn’t. I think that the normal phrase, especially in the startup world, is you a certain size and you go get the grownups and bring grownups into the room. And typically that means the people with MBAs, the business leaders and time. And again, there’s just all these examples of companies that completely miss the mark. There’s Intel after Andy Grove left. They were semiconductor manufacturing, microchip manufacturing a decade or so ago, and they just missed changes in technology. And a lot of it happens is because the mindset, if you bring in a sales leader or a business leader, and this can be at the top, but it’s also at the bottom. You need leaders who understand the problems and the technical challenges that a company is facing that can figure out where the puck is going rather than where it’s been. And so I think that’s the thing that we’re not talking enough about how important it is to enable these people to lead these companies if we want them to be successful.

Hannah Beaver (06:53):
And what do you think are some of the biggest blind spots that you are seeing through the people that you’re working with?

Matt Gjertsen (06:58):
It’s a hundred percent, and I don’t think this will surprise anybody. It’s understanding the people side. And I say this as someone who went through this transition. I studied physics when I was in college. I wanted to focus on the problem, I wanted to do the research. When I first joined the Air Force, I said, my dream job is to be the person in the basement of the Pentagon that’s just going through the research and the intel, and I wanted to do the work. I wanted to solve the problem. I didn’t think that the people side mattered, and it does. It matters so much and it’s only mattering more. And so I think that’s the big blind spot of helping people who have been in the textbooks their entire life realize how important the people side of things are and how much more effective you can be.

Hannah Beaver (07:51):
What did you do personally and what was that pivot for you where you realized this is something that mattered and that you could become passionate about?

Matt Gjertsen (07:59):
Yeah, I think I’ll first say there is nothing wrong with being the person in the basement. We need people.

Hannah Beaver (08:06):
We need the people in the basement.

Matt Gjertsen (08:09):
And I think it’s really important for companies to have at least just like an hour intro to management session for people before they become managers so they can see the honest truth of what it’s like and then have a pathway for people to raise their hand and say, I don’t want to do this. I love dual track promotion styles so that people can continue to move forward in just a technical contributor track. I think it’s essential in s, the key moment for me is really a humbling moment of you can’t be good enough because I think we keep telling ourself, one of the challenges of making this transition to focusing on the people rather than the technical side is we keep thinking, well, if I can keep getting better, if I can just keep scaling my productivity, if I can just get good enough, then I’ll be able to have the impact that I want to have on my own. As a society, we often create this myth where, because when we tell our stories about great people in the past, of course you have to have a star, right? There has to be the single person that the movie or the documentary focuses on.

(09:20):
And though that one person did make a big difference, and they might’ve been the key point, obviously they didn’t do it themselves, but because of the nature of storytelling, often we do an injustice of we’re not really able to tell the story of all those supporting characters. And so then when we see those stories, we can take it into ourselves and be like, if I can just get good enough, and ultimately what you have to tell yourself is you have to have the realization that if I want to have the impact that I want to have on the world, I can’t do it alone. I have to do it through other people. And I think that’s the mindset shift of it’s not about me, it’s about them. It’s not about what I can do, it’s what I can help others do. I think really the key mindset shift.

Hannah Beaver (10:12):
What makes technical people uniquely suited to step into those leadership positions?

Matt Gjertsen (10:17):
I think there’s two main things. First is that technical aspect. It’s really important that we have people who understand the problem and understand the challenges of an organization. So I think the fact that they have that is really essential because again, this isn’t true everywhere, but generally it’s probably easier to pick up and depending on how technical the company is or where they are in terms of cutting edge stuff, very often it’s probably easier to pick up the people side than it is to go get a PhD in something. So the fact that they have that technical background is really important. The second thing that I think is that I’ve witnessed firsthand, which is really remarkable for people who don’t have this background or this psychology is engineers are really good at focusing on the problem, not the people. So what that means in interactions is you can see two engineers in a meeting yelling at each other, getting incredibly angry over a problem.

(11:19):
There’s a problem with solutions that they’re arguing over. They finish that argument and then they walk out of the meeting room and they go have lunch and they’re fine and they’re best friends because there’s this clear separation in their mind. And I think that’s a skill that honestly most of us spend our life trying to develop of how do I have these really intense conversations about something that I believe to be true without having the conversation be about me? It’s about the problem. It’s about the idea. It’s not about me. I think generally in my experience, engineers people with more of a technical mindset, that is the superpower that they can take advantage of, but then they just need to also realize, okay, that’s great in that meeting, but then when you leave that meeting, you do actually need to care about the people side sometimes

Hannah Beaver (12:10):
That I can definitely see that happening. I have never really worked in a technical industry. I’ve very much been, I was also a liberal arts major, took a little class in most departments. I actually did take for my science requirements, I took an astronomy class.

Matt Gjertsen (12:26):
Yes, slow.

Hannah Beaver (12:28):
That did not go so well for me, but I did love the labs where we got to go out outside in the fresh air and do all of that. But I did that my first semester of year of college and that was probably the hardest class that I took in college, but it’s a very humbling experience. I have very a lot of respect for people that go into that industry. So I would love to hear an example of, and it can be a story of success or failure, both our welcome. Can you talk about someone that you’ve worked with where you’ve seen, and this can be an organization or even an individual leader that you’ve perhaps worked with that have been struggling to either engage their technical leaders in leadership development programs or an individual that’s kind of struggled themselves to engage and how do they turn it around?

Matt Gjertsen (13:13):
Yeah, I mean the first one that comes to mind, it was a recent company that I worked with. They are a space startup. They’re about a thousand people, so they’re growing quickly and we work with them. I got to work with them to kind of build their first frontline leadership development program, and it was a very technical company, so they were skeptical. I did, I think I did four different demos with different groups of people so that we could get feedback for anybody who is in the situation where there’s somebody that’s trying to get their organization to do leadership development and they’re in a technical organization that doesn’t really believe in it. I think leaning in on the most skeptical people first is really important because that’s kind of what we did. The person I was working with in the organization, the head of talent development, he strategically brought in people from the engineering side of the business that he knew both may be skeptical and were also well-respected.

(14:11):
And so when they came in, sat in on the demo, said straight up, I’m usually really skeptical of this. I usually don’t like stuff from HR, but really, but this was great. We need everybody to do this. It just goes a really long way. And so the more you can bring in those people early on, the skeptical people early on, make them part of the process is really important. Flipping to the other side of the change we saw in the organization, I was really excited to be a part of this. This organization already have lattice set up within the organization, and so they were tracking feedback, goal setting, all that kind of stuff. I think that the most important thing with development for technical people is that it needs to be really precise. They just don’t have time for any big fluffy language or large leaps of logic.

(15:01):
It needs to be very specific of what are we doing here? What’s the outcome? What am I supposed to do? Those are good rules for any development training, but I think it’s doubly important in this case. And because they were using Lattice when we’re talking about feedback, we built into the course, this is how you use Lattice to give feedback. Hey, take a minute and go give feedback to somebody on your team right now while we’re sitting here. And so as a result of making it so tactical, we were able to get really meaningful measures and we saw, I think between the first cohort and the later cohorts, there was a three x increase in the amount of feedback given through Lattice. And so that was probably one of the best examples we’ve had recently of a company that was very technical but was scaling quickly. So they needed support. We pulled in the right leaders early on to make sure we got buy-in really quickly. We made sure the program was very tailored to specific outcomes that we could then measure in the organization is really a really great change to see.

Hannah Beaver (16:09):
Is there anything else that you’ve done when approaching an organization and evaluating the leadership program that they maybe already have that needs an improvement or the leadership program that does not exist? What’s kind of a process you’d go to and a multi-step action plan that you would take to implement a successful program?

Matt Gjertsen (16:27):
I think the most important thing with anything is always starting at the end of knowing what you’re trying to achieve. And while you are doing that, it’s being really aware of the level of effort that an organization is willing to commit to it. And that’s how you gauge what you’re trying to do. And really what microlearning is, is it’s paring down the outcome that you’re trying to achieve. It’s being really narrow in what you’re trying to achieve. And so very few organizations I work with are going to say like, yes, we want to do the three day in-person immersive event.

Hannah Beaver (17:03):
Remove everyone from their everyday roles, only focus on learning, never happens.

Matt Gjertsen (17:08):
Yeah, it’s never going to happen. And so do you have two hours? Do you have 90 minutes? Do you have 30 minutes?

(17:15):
And so I think those are the two sides of the scale that you have to make sure to figure out what are you trying to achieve, what’s the level of commitment that your organization is willing to have, at least in phase one? And it’s the balance of those two. That is how you decide, okay, this is actually what I’m going to try to do. I’m not trying to make feedback champions. I’m not trying to make people a hundred percent ready to go into the difficult conversation with somebody on their staff tomorrow. More than likely what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to get them to give 20% more reinforcing feedback through Lattice, just being realistic about the outcome you are trying to achieve. And this is really, really hard because most people will see that and say, well, that’s not going to make a difference.

(18:12):
The key thing that I always try to remind people of is our brains think linearly, but change happens exponentially. And so if you say, I want to get from point A to point B, you don’t get from point A to point B in a straight line. You get there in an exponential curve. And so it’s hard to say, we only have an hour. We’re trying to achieve this small thing. It’s not really worth it. But the change stacks on itself over time. And so I think more than likely when you’re initially making changes, you’re going to feel like you’re not being ambitious enough. But it’s just that first step. Be as ambitious as you want for the end goal, but be realistic about that initial step.

Hannah Beaver (19:00):
And with that same theme of being realistic, how can we get employees to engage in these programs once we’ve gone in, we’ve set up the program, what are the main steps to do to get that employee to actually click and engage in the training?

Matt Gjertsen (19:16):
Yeah, it’s all about making it practical for their life and solving problems that they are actually having. One of the things that we do a lot when we make, because often we make workshops and then we make e-learning to pair with those workshops, e-learning or small little things. And within the e-learning, we do animated videos. I love animated videos over people live videos because if you have a live video, especially in leadership training where it’s some conversation that you’re recording, the first thing people do as soon as they see it is they start judging the acting ability of the two actors, which isn’t the point. And so I love using animated videos, and we always do kind of a deep dive analysis of talking with the client, what are the challenges, what are the real things? And then we make a script and we do a whole thing. And so we were doing this course on feedback and how to give feedback for a specific situation.

Hannah Beaver (20:06):
Always a popular one.

Matt Gjertsen (20:08):
Always popular one.

Hannah Beaver (20:08):
Always one of our most top topics is giving feedback effectively. Giving our feedback.

Matt Gjertsen (20:13):
Exactly. And so we make the video, we show it to our POC, and she takes it to her head of HR and it’s like just as a promo, we haven’t even finished the course yet, but here’s the stuff they’re working on. She watches the video. It’s less than 90 seconds. All the video is just like a situation. You are the supervisor, you see the situation now, you give feedback to somebody on it. If you’re someone who’s in hr, you got to get out in the business, understand the daily situations and challenges that the people are facing. And sure, all of your content directly goes after that. So the moment they see it, they can see themselves in that situation. When I was at SpaceX, one of the best trainings we ever did was there was a company, they have actual actors who they hire to come in.

(21:05):
And so we were preparing for the annual performance review and they had us create personas of situations of both people, the team member and the manager, and then the actor reads it. And then when we’re doing these situations rather than in a classroom setting, having two managers pair up and role play, the manager was role-playing with this actor. So they were good at pretending to be the employee. And it was really effective because we spent a lot of time making these different profiles. So the managers in the training, it wasn’t just that they were talking to random SpaceX employee, they were talking to a technician in propulsion who’s struggling with X because that’s the detail that we created with the profile. So they were doing a role play of a situation that was extremely relevant to them and felt very relevant. And so it’s thinking through what is the language that people use, what are the examples that’s going to resonate so that the moment they see the content, it’s like, oh, okay, this feels real to me.

Hannah Beaver (22:13):
It’s a making learning completely relatable. And I think what you mentioned too that I think is interesting with the in-person acting is especially if you’re seeing your own manager interact with an actor, it’s like, oh, I could be sat in this situation going through this with my manager myself. So I think that’s a really interesting point. What other challenges have you seen with your clients or even from your time at SpaceX in getting leadership buy-in to even begin to engage in these types of programs? What advice would you have there for someone that may be really, really pushing for that leadership development program and just cannot get buy-in from senior leaders?

Matt Gjertsen (22:54):
Yeah, I think it’s a challenge because there’s a lot of survivor bias, I think in the world. There’s so many senior leaders in organizations that didn’t get a lot of formal leadership training.

(23:11):
One, maybe they’re bad and they just don’t know it. They’re good, and it’s because they were just natural at it or they’re good because they figured it out. And so just very often there’s that I’m here and I didn’t get this, so why does anybody else need this? And the one other thing that I would add is not over promising. If you can’t get the CEOs a champion, get the head of operations. If you can’t get the hot head of operations, get a director of avionics. If you can’t get the director of avionics, get a supervisor of shift one. Find the highest ranking person that you believes in this stuff, solve their problems even if they are small. But then that’s how you start to spread this idea of champions and get them on your side. So then the supervisor goes to their manager and then their manager goes to their director, and then their director goes to their C-suite, whoever, and now you’re solving a bigger problem.

Hannah Beaver (24:13):
I like that. And I remember you telling me that in person too, starting with the just that one problem, finding that one person, solving that one problem and having the cascade effect of, okay, this is really something that can be helpful. What is one piece of advice that you might give to an engineer or a technical leader that has just been promoted into their first leadership role?

Matt Gjertsen (24:40):
I just always go back to it’s about people not problems. If you’re a technical person getting promoted, you already have the problem under control. You understand it. It’s not about proving your worth. It’s not about showing people that you are the best and that’s why you’re the manager. That’s not why you’re the manager. You’re the manager to help take care of the people side. Start talking to your people, start asking them about how things are going. Just think about how you can focus on the people side more than the problem side. Engineers can be the best leaders. I think that’s the hot take. I think a lot of times we assume that they won’t make good leaders. It is just a different in communication styles. And so very often on the people side, we have our communication style, and on the technical side, they have their communication style and we don’t understand their communication style. And so that’s why we assume they can’t communicate, but they can communicate with each other.

Hannah Beaver (25:35):
What is one book or resource that you would suggest to anyone that is looking to develop technical leaders?

Matt Gjertsen (25:42):
It’s interesting that I want to give this answer because it’s not directly technically related, but the book Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal is probably my favorite leadership book. And I think it really applies to a lot of technical organizations. So for anybody who hasn’t read it, it is a book about General Stanley McChrystal in I think 2006, he took over a special operations command, and this is right when Iraq was kind of falling apart after the invasion, huge insurgency, lots of violence. And he came into a situation where he’s in charge of all these fantastic teams. You have the Navy SEALs, you have the Rangers, you have Delta Force. They were all individually amazing, but they couldn’t work together. They were all stepping on each other. And so the book is his story of how he created a team of teams where all these individual teams could work together. And especially if we’re talking about companies that are scaling and solving technical problems, problems today are highly, highly interdisciplinary, but it’s getting them to work together. That is the key challenge to scaling these solutions, and so highly recommend that book.

Hannah Beaver (26:50):
If our listeners could take away one insight from today’s conversation, what would you want that insight to be?

Matt Gjertsen (26:58):
Just stop talking. I think for a lot of leaders, especially technical leaders and new leaders, we are always trying to impress others, improve that we are supposed to be in the position, and you’re really doing the opposite. And the key thing is to talk less and listen more.

Hannah Beaver (27:21):
As always, thank you so much for listening. For more from Matt, check out the show notes where we’ve linked his website and his LinkedIn page for more from How to Make a Leader. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we’d also appreciate if you could leave a review if you enjoyed the episode. We’ll be back next month and every month with another insight from another L and D expert. We’ll catch you next time as we learn how to make a leader.

Technical expertise doesn’t automatically translate into leadership traits. So how do we help engineers, scientists, and specialists become confident and effective managers?

Leadership development expert and former SpaceX trainer Matt Gjertsen shares how to grow strong leaders inside technical organizations. Drawing on 15 years of experience across aerospace, defense, and emerging tech, Matt specializes in turning skilled technical professionals into confident, effective leaders.

You’ll learn:

• Why leadership is often the biggest blocker to scale, not technology
• How to engage technical employees in learning (even the skeptical ones)
• Why engineers are uniquely suited to lead and what holds them back
• The mindset shift new technical managers must make

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Introducing Matt Gjertsen
(02:09) Why technical leadership is a unique challenge
(03:21) Scaling hard tech requires solving people problems
(05:23) The leadership gap in reindustrialization and the trades
(07:59) A humbling mindset shift: You can’t lead alone
(10:12) Why engineers are better at conflict than you think
(13:13) Getting skeptical technical leaders to buy in
(15:01) Designing leadership programs that drive measurable change
(16:27) Microlearning done right: Narrow goals, real impact
(19:16) How to get employees to engage in training
(22:54) Start small: The fastest way to executive buy-in

About Matt Gjertsen:

Matt Gjertsen is a leadership development expert and the founder of Better Every Day Studios, where he helps fast-growing technical organizations build practical, people-centered leadership programs. With over 15 years of experience across aerospace, defense, and emerging tech, Matt specializes in turning skilled technical professionals into confident, effective leaders.

He began his career as a U.S. Air Force officer and instructor pilot, later leading Learning & Development at SpaceX. There, he designed and scaled internal training for some of the world’s most ambitious engineers. His approach blends systems thinking with practical application, making leadership development accessible.

Now based in Los Angeles, Matt partners with companies in aerospace, manufacturing, and deep tech to deliver targeted training and tools for frontline and emerging leaders. He holds a degree in physics and is passionate about helping organizations grow not just through innovation but through better leadership.

To learn more about Matt, check out his LinkedIn and his website.