Getting Better Tech Leadership Means You're Going To Need To Be -- Or Find -- A Better Tech Leader

This week we've covered the role of upskilling through deliberate practice, which is how you get a 3.61x multiple return on investment. We covered intentionally applying your practice in becoming more open-minded about aggregating services in your practice. We covered expanding your list of tech risks to cover wellbeing. 

Not done yet!

Many organizations do a talent audit. This includes leaders, and people who want to become leaders. 

Organizations that are serious about leadership will do assessments. About 70% of leadership assessments happen at the individual -- i.e., you -- level; about 20% do team-level assessment, and the rest is some combination of those and a 360-degree/in-depth interview assessment.

(Organizations that are less serious about leadership will only do surveys, such as "the annual employee survey." Which is good only if action is taken based on results -- much like deliberate practice. Otherwise it's a ritual.)

I have included here a chart about assessments from a presentation I attended by Rob Kaiser that he had abstracted from a journal article. It outlines the distinctions between assessments done for organizational purposes and what you will learn from them relative to assessments done for diagnosing behavioral/psychological problems. Talent audits should not use clinical assessments, ever, for any reason. 

Here is the key question the assessment process answers: who from among these candidates will be best able to handle the technical work, the people functions, the politics, the cybersecurity team's growth needs, and vendors? (At higher levels the stakeholder list broadens to include the Board, investors, and the public.)

If the assessment process can't address that question in depth it's a waste of time and money. 

All candidates have challenges; no one candidate can do it all. That candidate might be as tall as a giraffe but have some continuity issues. And so the organization's decision-makers then need to answer this question: what deficiencies are we willing to tolerate and what talents can we not live without?

Remember, all hires are the best hire on Day One. Would they be re-hired at Day 90?

That leads us to address a few more key issues.

If you are the leader being assessed as part of a talent audit or for a new job:

You may not see the point, but bluntly put someone in a position to decide your organizational fate thought it was a good idea. Approach it as a chance to excel. Do not screw it up on purpose -- yes, really I've seen that -- or take it lightly. But do ask for feedback and a debrief. Ensure that you understand what the assessments say about you. Commit to identifying ways you could grow as part of your deliberate approach to improvement.

Pro tip: take the talent audit assessments seriously as a means to improve, because if you don't you are showing that improvement is not part of your leadership agenda.

If you are the person implementing the talent audit using an assessment battery:

Don't waste time and money and limited willingness to play along by using bad or trivial assessments. Do not use assessments of psychopathology. Commit to treating people fairly and with dignity. Remember that assessments are one piece of the puzzle of growing the best cybersecurity talent function for your company.

Ask us how you can improve your leadership before your won leaders ask you why you're not improving your leadership.