After watching a fifth grader standing confident before a class full of peers and parents to deliver a poised speech on Oklahoma, I got to watch my own son mumble through a presentation on Maryland. Now, his was actually more organized, including economy, geography, major cities, and educational institutions that he had gleaned from an atlas of the United States and the Internet. These comprehensive details were missing from the lively overview sprinkled with “places I visited” presentation made by the more poised student. If the presentations had been written, his would have been considered superior and the teacher did notice.

Years later when developing a technical training program, a coworker with years of experience in leadership development confided to me that he really didn’t feel comfortable with technology. Most of the leaders he had dealt with tended towards the inspirational, big picture persona. They like to lead people, and leave the details to others. So they didn’t really comprehend how to find trends in data through crunching numbers, or the use the technology available for planning and scoping out possible courses of action.

What do these two vignettes have in common? Use of technology is changing society, education, work and who we consider to be leaders. If you paid attention, you may have noticed the rise in many tech companies was engineered by a pair, the vocal spokesman and the less noticeable creative “brain” – one to inspire people, the other to invent things that actually worked.  In the past when people shared ideas (and source codes) freely over the Internet, some vocal promoters had a wealth of new products/ideas to choose from without working with the geek who could pull all the details together. We probably never will learn the real inventor in many cases.

But leadership is changing, a lot of people tell you (or sell you) their idea in the new practice of leadership coaching. It is a rising business in which people try to teach social skill to the techies who seem to lack them, or encourage the confident speaker that he really does understand things when he doesn’t know what to do with pile of data. We may soon rethink who is good at doing what based on a whole new criteria, especially our leaders.