Giving Compass' Take:

• Higher emotional quotients are important for rising cybersecurity leadership, as more uncertainty and issues arise in public health, governance, and the future of our economy. 

• How can charitable giving help cybersecurity leadership thrive? 

• Read these lessons from experts in cybersecurity. 

Leaders with higher emotional quotient, or “EQ”, bring greater success to their organizations.

We’ve been talking about emotional intelligence for years, but it has never been more important than it is in these very challenging times for ourselves, our teams, our Twin Cities community and our entire nation. We are all confronted daily with fear, disruptions to our lives and real uncertainty about issues related to public health, governance and the future of our economy. We also can reasonably expect a challenging period ahead for team unity and effort, as we know politics has become increasingly divisive and it is a major election year.

These same trends most certainly apply to those of us with leadership responsibilities in IT, InfoSec, Threat Intelligence and Cyber Operations – but we also know that career development in our fields is largely dedicated to binary answers in hard math. The no-nonsense culture of security doesn’t always include the softer skills of human-to-human interaction. So how do we in IT and security boost EQ? There must be a way.

In a management bible for many, titled The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker says “Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.”

Whatever our role in cybersecurity, as we get promoted within our organizations using formal authority as a bludgeon becomes much less effective. We need to effectively influence a diverse set of people beyond subordinates, to include peers, external stakeholders, and even superiors.

Read the full article about cyber leadership by Andrew Borene at The Aspen Institute.