T-shaped team members: The key to versatile and effective teams

Working in a silo (everyone focusing on their area of expertise) has its benefits, but it rarely produces high-performing, cross-functional teams at an organizational level. Today’s companies seek T-shaped employees with strong specialty knowledge in one area, complementary experience in other areas, and soft skills to enable effective cross-departmental teams.

T-shaped team members are innovative, high-performing members of your team. Their versatility should be nurtured and harnessed to support individual career development and your organization's core goals and objectives.

In this article, you’ll learn the concept of T-shaped team members for tech teams. We will highlight the benefits of these valuable team members and provide strategies to help you nurture and develop these skills in your staff.

What does a T-shaped employee mean?

A T-shaped team member is an employee with in-depth, specialized knowledge in a specific niche and a desire and ability to take on additional responsibilities or tasks across other disciplines. These employees are valuable within an organization because not only are they experts in their specialty, but they have the hard and soft skills to contribute to the larger team—usually in leadership or cross-departmental collaborative positions. They can also apply this cross-functional knowledge to their specialty to better understand how it fits into the bigger organizational picture.

Vertical and horizontal T-shaped skills

Vertical (expertise) skills of T-shaped employee
  • Niche understanding of their specialty
  • Hands-on experience in their niche
  • Desire to keep their specialty skills up-to-date
Horizontal (breadth) skills of T-shaped employee
  • Have complementary and transferable skills
  • Have strong communication and collaboration skills
  • More likely to contribute to innovation

The balance between expertise (the horizontal part of the T) and breadth of knowledge (the vertical part of the T) is important for individual and company success. Employees need this balance to maintain their specialized knowledge and experience while knowing when they can contribute to cross-functional teams and goals.

What is an example of a T-shaped person in tech?

Here are four examples of what you might find in a T-shaped employee in tech roles:

  • A cybersecurity expert with experience in web design
  • A web designer with experience in marketing
  • A data analyst with experience in a variety of coding languages
  • An HR coordinator with experience in data analytics


Benefits of T-shaped team members

The benefits of T-shaped team members are as diverse as the skills and abilities they bring to your team:

Strong core skills

A T-shaped employee often has strong core skills that easily cross disciplines. These employees can use these core skills to excel in their specialty and expand the breadth of their experience to support larger teams, even in other departments.

Good communication

Due to their core skills, they are also often great communicators. These employees make great liaisons between departments as they often more easily understand the needs of different stakeholder groups. They can help unify departments and organizations as a whole.

Great collaboration

Combining their core skills and communication skills also often makes T-employees great at collaborative projects. Their hard and soft skills are valued in leadership positions that span working groups or departments.

Big-picture thinkers

Their wide-ranging knowledge and abilities help them to see the bigger picture, which siloed, specialized work usually doesn’t allow. This could lead to greater innovations and output that support the larger organization beyond their department or immediate team.

Identifying T-shaped skills in your team

You likely already have T-shaped employees on your staff, or if not, you may have individuals with the potential to become one.

There are many ways to identify a T-shaped employee already on your team. Here are the behaviours to look for and examples of what that may look like for a tech employee:

What are T-shaped qualities

Behaviour to look for Examples (in Tech)
Highly skilled, deep expertise and confidence in their area of expertise
  • Someone who has earned several promotions already
  • An employee who upskills regularly or attends industry conferences
Good collaborators
  • Someone who has held leadership or liaison positions on tech projects
  • Someone who shows good teamwork with other departments
Great communicators
  • Those who can clearly articulate technical topics to non-tech employees
  • Those who are often asked (or volunteer) for leadership roles
  • Those with strong interpersonal skills
Diverse skill set
  • Shows interest in vertical areas of expertise
  • Shows keen interest in understanding the work of other team members (in other departments)
Adaptive
  • Ability to retain and apply new knowledge to better your systems and processes
  • Individuals are often the first to offer their support or expertise when someone needs it
Committed
  • Someone who has been with the company (or in their specialty) for many years
  • Someone who actively (officially or unofficially) mentors junior employees

Once you have identified team members who are likely to excel in T-shaped employee roles, you can play a crucial role in helping them develop their T-shaped skills.

Strategies to develop T-shaped skills

First, discuss with the employee whether they’re willing and able to develop their T-shaped skills. They'll likely say yes if you’ve correctly identified their skills and attitude.

You can then support their skills and personal development through several strategies and tactics, which may include:

Encouraging cross-training and skill sharing

Do a more detailed tech skills assessment to see where T-shaped employees excel and where skills gaps may exist (in soft and hard skills). Often, a good place to start is to cross-train in areas similar to the skills they already have.

For example, if a team member already understands iOS programming, you could upskill them in Android or another OS programming language. Or, if an employee is already an expert in HR but shows an interest in learning data analytics to perform their job better, look for data analytics courses designed for HR professionals.

Did you know that 94% of the top 10% of workplaces offer learning and development programs to improve employee retention, increase employee engagement, and enhance productivity? This is because they recognize that upskilling and reskilling courses like those at Lighthouse Labs help to:

  • Improve employee retention
  • Increase employee engagement
  • Enhance employee productivity
  • Support the personal development of valuable T-shaped employees

Learn more about how Lighthouse Labs can support internal talent development.

Promoting a learning culture

Do you foster a culture of continuous learning in your organization? 87% of Millennials believe professional development and career growth are essential. A learning culture can support your dedication to nurturing your T-shaped team members and identifying new ones.

You can promote a learning culture in the workplace by:

  • Providing an educational allowance for each employee to develop the skills they want or need
  • Creating mentorship opportunities
  • Hosting lunch-and-learns
  • Supporting enrollment in upskilling and reskilling programs

When you can provide opportunities for personal and professional growth, your employees are often more engaged, leading to 21% more profitability for your organization as well as higher well-being, better retention, lower absenteeism, and higher productivity.

Leveraging mentorship and coaching

In addition to formalized training and upskilling or reskilling, you can support mentorship and coaching to help develop your T-shaped teams. Mentorship has two key benefits:

  • Helps more experienced team members (mentors) practice their T-shaped skills in leadership as they pass knowledge to junior members (mentees)
  • It helps junior members get the upskilling and support they need to become experts in their niche and develop the T-shaped skills they need for success

To set up a mentorship or coaching program:

  1. Identify the team members who value learning and upskilling
  2. Identify team members who are already T-shaped employees with a passion for being a leader or coach
  3. Match mentors with mentees who have complementary skills
  4. Create a plan for the mentorship (outcomes, goals, how often to meet or check-in formally...etc.)

Mentorship is usually best done 1:1 when possible (for most individualized support), but if you have many team members with similar interests, you could create a group coaching program to support them simultaneously.

Challenges and solutions

Your organization may face some challenges in developing its T-shaped individuals. Here are a few common challenges and how to overcome them.

Challenge Solutions
You struggle to identify a T-shaped employee.
  • Create an employee self-survey to identify skills and confidence.
  • Include questions to determine T-shaped team members in annual employee reviews.
Take this tech skills quiz to get started.
You don’t know where to start with employee development.
  • Identify the skills your employee excels at and where gaps exist.
  • Look for internal talent development programs for upskilling and reskilling on tech skills.
Browse Lighthouse Labs’ corporate upskilling and reskilling programs.
Your junior team doesn’t have internal mentors or coaches to support them.
  • Provide employees with an educational stipend to use for courses and programs.
  • Enroll staff in external upskilling or reskilling programs taught by industry experts.
Direct your team to these free tech skills courses to get started.
Your team doesn’t seem interested in becoming T-shaped employees.
  • Hire recent graduates from tech skills bootcamps or programs with the soft and technical skills you need.
Learn why you should hire a recent tech grad.



Helping your T-shaped employees excel in the workplace

Your T-shaped employees have the potential to be the catalyst for a massive, positive shift in your company. Their expertise, leadership, and a keen interest in learning and development can help your teams be more productive and better meet your organizational goals and objectives.

Lighthouse Labs can match you with recent grads with the skill and determination to become your organization's T-shaped employees.

Ask us about hiring recent grads.

Lighthouse Labs can also support your learning and development of T-shaped teams through our corporate upskilling and reskilling programs for coding, data, and cybersecurity.

Contact our Internal Talent Development team to get started today!