What Exactly Is Talent? Part 2, Cybersecurity Manager Talent

Boss man. Boss lady. Your cybersecurity manager is the lynchpin that makes your cyber-operations work. 

We previously discussed cybersecurity technician talent, and now it's time for cybersecurity manager talents.

Cybersecurity technician talent is the foundation for cybersecurity manager talent. Unfortunately, and we see this all the time, high-performing technicians are more likely to be promoted to manager.

Promoting high-performing technicians to management makes sense in many ways, some good and some bad. It's critical for the cybersecurity manager to know cybersecurity. Also, and we all understand this, we're not going to promote people who are poor performers at a lower level. 

This is the argument about minimum competence again. Sure, technician performance is a sign that the person is minimally competent, and yes that counts. 

But there are too many differences in the demands on managers versus technicians for competence at a lower level to predict performance at a higher level. One difference in talent between technicians and managers is in the ways they can fail. Cybersecurity technicians primarily fail through not being up to the technical demands of the job. In some high-powered organizations, failure comes from lack of team-player talent. Managers can fail any which way you like: can't build and manage a team, can't delegate, can't coordinate with other managers, doesn't understand the work to be done. The last one is tricky because it's the final act for most failed managers who think that managing a technical function such as cybersecurity is like managing any other technical function. That ignores what's different about cybersecurity from other fields.

What counts beyond minimum competence is talent. We previously discussed the definition of talent offered by Conchie & Dalton: "A measurable, innate characteristic that a person demonstrates consistently in order to achieve high performance. Talents are strictly defined. A person who has a strong measure in a specific talent will perform predictably better in tasks related to that talent."

An easy rubric, especially for organizations that are new to hiring, is this: attaining certifications, having a degree, or cybersecurity experience in the military or at another company, are signs of past behavior; talent is about future behavior.

We at Pythia carried out a study of over 150 10-K filings in 2025 (soon to be updated to 2026), along with reviews of position descriptions across the Internet and in the NIST CSF. We also tapped into our significant experience with talent-based studies from organizations across the world. This review process identified a conceptual model of five clusters that are required for effective performance as a cybersecurity professional: Direction, Drive, Influence, Relationship, and Execution. They are defined as follows:

• Direction – where do you want to lead?
• Drive – what motivates you?
• Influence – how do you shape the beliefs and thoughts of others?
• Relationship – how do you prefer to work with others?
• Execution – how do you shape the work goals of others and self?

All cybersecurity professionals have talents in these areas. The nature of those talents and degree to which there is more in some areas than others depends on the level of employee.

Different organizations are going to value some of these talents more than others. Smaller organizations are probably going to need managers who are more like technicians with execution and direction talent; larger organizations are going to need managers with a lot of each talent array, especially drive. 

In the NIST CSF 'response to AI' framework, we see cybersecurity managers filling the "thwart" part of the cybersecurity process. A manager's contribution is not at the technical level ("secure") or the executive risk management level ("defend").

Based on over 100 years of empirical organizational science research, and based on our process to identify these talent elements, we can state affirmatively that all organizations will reduce their cybersecurity hiring risk by hiring for these talents.

For a cybersecurity manager role, a talent-based approach means that you will hire someone who "gets it," wants to engage with your systems and processes, manages a team for growth, can identify the different signals within the noise, creates value for organizational partners, and is looking to advance.

Question 1: Did you have other goals for this person?

Question 2: Can you manage that person's performance?

We'll have posts later on ways we measure these talents, and how they differ from competencies. Also, we will post about cybersecurity executive talent.

Ask us how we can help you clarify the talent you need at any level of your cybersecurity function.