How -- And Why -- You Should Polish Your Apple To Reflect Your Cybersecurity Leadership Talent

Apples may be both the most revered and feared fruit in human history. There was that nasty business in the Garden of Eden, of course ("Him by fraud I have seduced/From his Creator, and the more to increase/Your wonder, with an apple"; John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VIII, lines 485-488). Apples are among the most beloved fruits in Eastern Europe. The fairy tale princess Snow White was poisoned by the Evil Queen in a fit of envy through biting into an apple. One of the most valuable companies in the world, Apple, was early on sued by Apple Records over its logo. 

You'd think we'd all be wary of apples. Oh no.

In fact we engage in apple-polishing, as the phrase turns, to gain the favor of those above us in our hierarchies. And it keeps on working.

All of us as employees at some point need to resolve this issue: stay in the technical/individual contributor field we started in, or go into management. The next steps, moving into mid-level leadership and then executive leadership, are only possible if the initial transition is handled well. Not everyone will be competitive. In short, some people are more charismatic than others, and more charismatic people are more competitive at promotion time.

There are some basic facts of apple-polishing. Call them laws, if you like.

1. Self-promotion and charisma are in fact how you get noticed for leadership roles. There, I said it. Let's assume that technical skills are a given; employees who check in with the boss a lot, who are available when needed, who do it all with a smile -- those people, fairly or not, are working to get promoted and guess what happens. Compare that to employees who look stressed, don't communicate well or often, are disputatious, and who second-guess their bosses behind the boss' back.

2. And remember, self-promotion and charisma are *NOT* part of your "core competencies." We've written a lot about how trivial competencies are beyond outlining minimum qualifications. This is an example where organizational reality, not core competencies, are proven to be critical.

3. Our friend Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is back at it to assure us of a third law of apple-polishing: anyone can, with some effort, at least become more charismatic. As we note, talent cannot be taught but it can be enhanced. Let's suppose that you don't like apple-polishing and don't want to 'play office politics' but still, you know, want to get promoted. Here are your eight coaching tips from Tomas, who by the way is himself highly charismatic:

• "Charisma was never merely about what leaders say, but about who they are believed to be." That is, do you want your boss to think you're leadership material or do you simply not care because you're here to do your job?
• Your personality creates opportunities for you to be seen as charismatic. Tomas says: "Lower levels of social anxiety and higher self-confidence (even when delusional) further increase the likelihood that others interpret behavior as charismatic, including when objective competence is unchanged. Having a proactive personality and higher levels of intelligence also help. At the same time, traits linked to emotional expressiveness, assertiveness, and impression management amplify charismatic attributions, particularly in public or high-visibility contexts. Importantly, these effects are far from deterministic: personality shapes how individuals behave and how often they seek the spotlight, thereby increasing exposure and opportunities for charisma to be inferred."
• That's right, ugly people face long odds: "More physically attractive individuals are more likely to be perceived as confident, competent, and socially skilled, even in the absence of objective differences in ability or performance... charisma is shaped not only by what leaders say and do, but also by how effortlessly they fit culturally shared prototypes of what a 'leader' is supposed to look like."
• Chatisma itself is not good or bad, it's about how it's put to use: "Charisma functions less as a moral force than as a force multiplier: it increases a leader’s ability to move people, but remains agnostic about where they are being led."
• Yes, you can fake being charismatic: "Training primarily enhances perceptions of leadership rather than substantive competence, reinforcing the idea that charisma can be strategically deployed, and at times simulated, without necessarily improving decision quality or ethical judgment."
• Charisma allows for influence and influence can be corrupting: "Charisma, when decoupled from competence and ethics, does not merely fail to protect societies from bad leaders. It actively helps install them. In short, charisma is not a safeguard against destructive leadership. It is often the very mechanism through which it operates."
• It's a bad idea to fail to calibrate being charismatic relative to the culture you find yourself in: "Charisma is not a universal currency of leadership effectiveness. It is a culturally contingent signal, whose value depends on shared norms about authority, emotion, and self-presentation. Leaders who rely too heavily on charisma without adapting to cultural expectations risk being admired in some contexts and rejected in others."
• People want charismatic leaders when there is greater uncertainty: "Charisma matters most when people are confused, anxious, or overwhelmed. When outcomes are hard to evaluate and expertise is ambiguous, followers rely less on evidence and more on emotional cues, confidence, and narrative clarity."

What does all this mean for you? In brief, your leadership journey relies in part on you being seen as having charismatic qualities. You could do that better. Even if you feel icky doing it, at least acknowledge that you need to try to get people to buy into your charisma if you want to achieve your well-intentioned goals.

Do it. Go ahead & self-promote, be an apple-polisher, do the political savvy thing. But do it the right way.

Ask us how you can buff up your cybersecurity leadership talent.

(image by Lily.Smith, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)