Cybersecurity Talent: Leading The Cybersecurity Enterprise Is About Building On Known Knowns And Mitigating Known Unknowns

We at Pythia Cybersecurity focus on cybersecurity talent. It's one of our core areas of expertise.

What is talent? It's a combination of human characteristics (personality, intelligence, interests, motivations, maybe physical ability) harnessed and focused by strategic goals determined by leadership (including self-leadership) that are consistent with achieving worthwhile outcomes. Because of its formative role in talent, today we will continue discussing leadership as a key element of behavioral cybersecurity.

Why did you go into management, aside from money and adulation? In every new supervisor/manager course I've sat in on, participants address this question and nearly 100% of the time the answers fall into one of two camps:

1. "I once worked for a total nutjob failure of a manager and I want to show how you do it right"

2. "I once worked for the most amazing human being of a manager and I want to share that with others"

No one ever says (out loud) "Because I want to dominate other people, have them call me Boss, and make 10 cents more an hour."

Only you can answer this question. Call it a known known. 

In behavioral science we have a concept called the Johari Window. Charmingly, it got its name from its two developers, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham. The idea is that there are aspects of your behavior that are public (known to you) or private (unknown to others), and aspects of your behavior that are known about you by others or that could be known by others but remain unknown to you. For example things that are known knowns are how your attitude at work, things you talk about, etc., while things that are gossiped about you without you being aware of it are known unknowns.

You can scale the concept to what is known about bodies of knowledge.

The good news is that there are a lot of known knowns in the behavioral study of leadership. For example, while I personally don't subscribe to the "servant leadership" framework, people understand it and for some it gives them a sense of purpose. 

Other known knowns abound. The military has lots of models of leadership, some for enlisted leaders and some for officers and some from retired generals. Being a leadership guru is a cottage industry, and good gurus are, well, good. (One coach guru we follow, Scott Eblin, has a good new post reflecting on the leadership guidelines of the leadership guru Peter Drucker.) 

When you build upon known knowns, you are displaying mastery: you know what you're getting into, you understand how to apply your talent productively, you can create a system for development and feedback toward your goals. 

Then there are unknown unknowns:

How will you lead cybersecurity when leadership or budgets change?

How will you lead when your company wants to move into new markets and your platform is not ready for those challenges?

How will you recover from a hack?

How will you lead your team when you lack motivation and it feels like a burden?

Answers to these challenges require more than "We'll be fine!" or "No problem!" or "Been there done that!"

There are a lot of known unknowns about leadership challenges -- things that may be more obvious to others who watch you lead than they are to you. Here are three in particular: 

You might derail, for example, when you feel squeezed or you lose your leadership passion or your team under-performs. After all about 50% of managers fail. Derailing occurs when you lose your mastery rage and your previously tolerated quirks (life of the party, detail orientation, drive to compete, etc.) start to sabotage you. 

You might start over-emphasizing your strengths, thus losing versatility. Remember, you will succeed because you emphasized your strengths and you will fail because you didn't mitigate your weaknesses. Our friend Rob Kaiser has a whole practice on versatility.

You might start to fail to lead your team well because team dynamics are constantly changing. Check out what our friend Gordy Curphy has to say about this.

The point is that behavioral science has a wealth of knowledge about leadership -- more than you probably know.

Know what to know. Ask us how we can work with you and your team to amplify your cybersecurity leadership talent.