Modern Management and Leadership

Best Practice Essentials with CISO/CSO Applications

Mark Tarallo

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000412116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Gestión

In one modest-sized volume, this book offers three valuable sets of knowledge. First, it provides best practice guidance on virtually every large-scale task a modern manager may be involved in—from recruiting and hiring to onboarding and leading teams, and from employee engagement and retention to performance management and working with difficult employees.

Second, it explains the essential concepts and practice of a range of effective leadership styles—including (but not limited to) servant leadership, crisis leadership, change agent leadership, and diversity and inclusion leadership. Third, it offers brief case studies from select CISOs and CSOs on how these management and leadership principles and practices play out in real-life workplace situations.

The best practice essentials provided throughout this volume will empower aspiring leaders and also enable experienced managers to take their leadership to the next level. Many if not most CISOs and other leaders have had very little, if any, formal training in management and leadership. The select few that have such training usually obtained it through academic courses that take a theoretical, broad brush approach. In contrast, this book provides much actionable guidance in the nitty-gritty tasks that managers must do every day.

Lack of management practical knowledge puts CISOs and CSOs at a disadvantage vis-a-vis other executives in the C-suite. They risk being pigeonholed as "security cops" rather than respected business leaders. Many articles on these subjects published in the press are too incomplete and filled with bad information. And combing through the few high-quality sources that are out there, such as Harvard Business Publishing, can take hundreds of dollars in magazine subscription and book purchase fees and weeks or months of reading time. This book puts all the essential information into your hands through a series of concise chapters authored by an award-winning writer.

PART I
MANAGING AND LEADING: EVOLUTION/REVOLUTION

1

THE FAILURE OF TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP

“The Very Practice of Management No Longer Works.”

These are the opening words of a rather formidable source: the most recent updated edition of Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report, released in 2020. The report is one of the most comprehensive surveys of U.S. management trends and practices in existence. It is based on the fortress of data that Gallup maintains: nearly 200,000 employee participants in the company’s various panels and polls, and more than 31 million survey respondents included in its client database.

The report contains some sobering statistics. A majority of employees – 51 percent – say they are not engaged at work. Only about one-third of employees say that they are engaged. A large majority of employees say that they are not managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.

“These figures indicate an American leadership philosophy that simply doesn’t work anymore,” Gallup CEO Jim Clifton writes in the report.

In 2019, Gallup found a similar trend worldwide. Its State of the Global Workplace report found that global employee engagement was a dismal 15 percent.

“The current practice of management – which attempts to turn weaknesses into strengths – doesn’t work,” the report says of global management practices.

In sum, a majority of workers around the world are not engaged at a work. A large majority say that they are not managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. The traditional leadership philosophy, and the current practice of management, does not work anymore.

This was the grim state of management when COVID-19 hit in early 2020. The coronavirus pandemic transformed the world and the workplace. The pandemic did not alleviate the negative trends that Gallup and many others were witnessing and experiencing in the management and leadership space.

It accelerated those trends. In the management and leadership space, the pandemic served as an accelerator. Needed changes to the practice of management and leadership are now needed even more.

So, if the Gallup findings are correct, and the very practice of current management and leadership no longer works, how can you buck the trend and be a superb manager and a stellar leader?

Read this book, and follow its guidance.

What the New Workforce Wants and Needs: Mission, Purpose, Meaning

“Of course, all employees need fair pay. But they are now driven more than ever by mission and purpose and require a workplace culture that delivers it,” writes Clifton in the Global Workplace report.

That is what the workforce of the future will need and want: a workplace that delivers mission and purpose. To those two components, add a third to arrive at the Holy Trinity: work that is meaningful.

“Researchers have shown meaningfulness to be more important to employees than any other aspect of work, including pay and rewards, opportunities for promotion, or working conditions,” write Catherine Bailey and Adrian Madden in the MIT Sloan Management Review.

What is meaningful work? Bailey and Madden found that meaningfulness has some essential attributes. It matters to people other than just themselves, so it is self-transcendent. It often feels poignant and emotionally deep. It comes and goes in an episodic fashion. It is more often experienced in a reflective mode rather than in the moment. It is best understood within the context of one’s personal life experiences.

But being aligned with mission, having a deep purpose, and accomplishing meaningful work are by no means a given in many jobs, professions, roles, and organizations. (Bailey and Madden, in their research, found that “poor management” was the top destroyer of meaningfulness.)

And so, workers in the new workforce need and want to work for managers and leaders who will understand and build on their strengths, give them developmental opportunities to fulfill their potential and career goals, recognize their accomplishments and contributions, and coach them in real time.

They need and want managers who serve as matchmakers of mission and meaning.

These leaders take the time and effort to understand and appreciate the capabilities of each individual team member, and then align them with the organization’s mission to best make use of those talents. This alignment is successful when the employee feels they are putting in meaningful work that advances the organization’s mission and gives the team member a sense of purpose.

Which Managers and Leaders Will Succeed?

Leaders and managers who serve as matchmakers of mission and meaning increase their chances of succeeding.

Leadership and management styles will vary, but most of them will share certain best practices. Similarly, the guidance and counsel offered in this book ranges widely but threaded throughout are core principles.

These successful leaders and managers will strive to reach a profound level of professional connection with their team members, through ongoing conversation. They will take the time to understand their employees’ perspectives, their goals, their motivations, their individualized sense of purpose, and what is meaningful to them in their professional lives.

They will strive to sustain a humane workplace that makes the most out of the contributions by team members by identifying and developing skills and then capitalizing on them to the benefit of both the team member and the organization.

As strong communicators, these successful leaders and managers recognize and articulate. They recognize accomplishments and strong skill levels, and they articulate how the team member’s work makes a vital contribution to the organization’s mission, and how the staffer brings value to the organization.

They demonstrate, through example, that the relationship between leader and team member is a two-way street. They are close listeners; they seek and value the views, ideas, and perspectives of team members. They coach to strengths and help team members develop in a way that supports their career goals.

These leaders and managers have a dual mission: to best serve the organization they are helping to manage, and to best serve the people they are leading. And they do not take for granted their prominence in the eyes of those they lead and manage.

Reader, if you are a manager or leader, then by dint of your position as somebody’s “boss,” you are very likely one of the key figures in their life.

Consider, then, your position and influence. What you say can reverberate in an employee’s head for days, weeks, months, and years. A negative comment can resurface – sometimes with ruining effect. This can happen to a team member during vacations, during cherished time spent with family and friends, during otherwise restorative downtime.

Keep this in mind. Successful leaders and managers usually do.

Interlude: Note on the Text

The aim of this book is to help you consistently perform at the highest level as a manager, and fulfill your potential as a leader, as you move forward in this rapidly changing environment in the emerging post-COVID world, where many traditional management and leadership practices have been falling short.

The book is designed to guide leaders and managers, both aspiring and seasoned, at any stage of their careers.

Many workers first become a manager when they are promoted into a managerial role on the basis of their performance in their previous non-managerial job. But no one gives them practical advice and best practice guidance on actual tasks they will have to manage, such as hiring and onboarding and coaching, keeping team members engaged and inspired, sustaining a healthy workplace culture, mitigating bias, and turning around difficult employees.

This book does that. It will also help seasoned managers take their performance up to the next level, and help them make adjustments to ensure their practices stay relevant moving forward.

Part III, on leadership, offers guidance and best practices for a range of different leadership modes. It takes this approach because most successful leaders are actually many leaders in one: a two-way leader, a crisis leader, a service leader, a sustaining leader, etc. The chapters offer advice on how to lead in whatever mode you need to be in.

Part IV offers brief in-the-trenches case studies from successful managers and leaders, CISOs and CSOs, in different situations, and in locations ranging from Silicon Valley to West Africa.

Part V concludes this book with a brief look at leading in the future.

Enjoy!

PART II
BEST PRACTICES FOR EVERY MANAGEMENT ROLE

2

CRUCIAL EARLY DAYS: EFFECTIVE ONBOARDING

Picture this. It is the first day on the job for your latest hire. Your new employee is eager and energetic, buzzing around the office with an easy smile for all, radiating enthusiasm.

Fast forward a few months. The new hire seems chastened and diminished, schlumping around the office like a half-deflated balloon, radiating regret. An early exit from a job once considered a great career move may be imminent.

The likelihood of this disheartening scenario can be minimized with careful management of a strategic onboarding program.

The Fragile New

Onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, is the process through which new hires learn attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively in their organizations, according to a definition included in a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation report, Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success.

Research and conventional wisdom both suggest that employees often have about three months to prove themselves in a new job, according to the report author Talya Bauer, an onboarding expert and university management professor.

However, new hires are physiologically vulnerable during this period.

This can be explained as follows. When undertaking familiar tasks, people often switch to autopilot to conserve energy and save brain power for other tasks that require more conscious thought. To imagine this, think of a driver on a daily commute to work. The familiarity of this task allows the driver to switch into mental autopilot mode; once he or she arrives, the person may have little or no recollection of the trip itself.

New hires have fewer autopilot opportunities; most actions in a new position require conscious thought. This is true even for remote workers who may have to get accustomed to new videoconference meetings, new contact patterns, and new online tasks. This creates “new hire fatigue,” and it can make new hires less resilient. Thus, the mindset of new hires, who might be outwardly enthusiastic, can often be anxious and nervous, feeling confused and a bit lost.

In that mindset, when things don’t go according to expectations, there’s a greater chance for either a quick quit within the first 90 days or an exit for another opportunity within the first year. Roughly 46 percent of newly hired employees fail within 18 months, while only 19 percent achieve unequivocal success, according to a study conducted by...