T-shaped Professionals: The Past, Present, and Future of MyT-Me Development

Abstract

This paper discusses the past, present, and future of developmental planning for T-shaped professionals (Gardner 2017; Freund 2018; Saviano et al 2016). Professionals with extensive T-shape experience are able to combine deep problem-solving expertise with broad communications skills across different roles and work more easily across disciplines, cultures, systems, emerging technologies, work practices, mindsets, and more. While the general notion of a T-shaped professional is well established in the literature, strategies for creating a “personalized T-shape development plan” for an individual, team, or organization remain elusive. A central challenge to date for creating a T-shape development plan is establishing a baseline assessment from which to set developmental goals. Herein, we present a proposed approach to meeting this need. MyT-Me is a prototype web-based T-metric tool that computes a MyT-Me score based on an analysis of a resume or LinkedIn profile and then displays a T-shape profile in a dashboard compared with the 25th, 50th, 75th, and 95th percentile scores of stratified subsets of others who are also on the MyT-Me platform. With the rise of generative AI for coaching tasks, there has never been a better time to revisit this topic of developmental planning for T-shaped professionals. While much work remains, our motivation in this conceptual paper is to begin to illuminate both diverse challenges and exciting opportunities ahead.

Keywords: MyT-Me Platform, Developmental Planning, T-shaped Professionals, T-shaped Skills

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005078