Seven Leadership Skills CIOs Need To Drive Results

Technology is the single most powerful enabling force available in business today, but as executives and boards of directors recognise its potential, CIOs must have the right leadership skills in place to deliver on heightened expectations, according to Gartner, Inc. and Korn/Ferry.

In the recently published book “The CIO Edge – Seven Leadership Skills You Need To Drive Results”, Graham Waller, Vice President and Executive Partner with Gartner Executive Programs; George Hallenbeck Director, Intellectual Property Development, for Korn/Ferry Leadership and Talent Consulting; and Karen Rubenstrunk, formerly with Korn/Ferry’s CIO practice, examine the key skills CIOs need and how to develop them.

“CIOs understand they need to manage IT processes in order to deliver results and to meet key expectations. They also understand the need to lead people in order to deliver on those goals. However, what many don’t understand is the incredibly important interplay between the two,” said Waller. “Focusing on leadership and people skills - the ‘soft’ things that many CIOs tend to minimise in their quest to keep up with their day-to-day responsibilities of managing IT - is in fact the biggest determinate of their success, or failure.”

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IT executives who have the best relationships and can earn ‘followership’, not only with their employees, but more importantly with their business partners within and outside the organisation, tend to make the most effective business technology executives.

“During the course of our research, we observed the CIOs with the best people skills used these soft skills to influence expectations well ahead of when priorities were set or a project began,” Hallenbeck said. “Before a dime was budgeted, or staff time allocated, they were meeting with their colleagues and engaging in candid two-way conversations that defined what success would look like. Then they delivered against the expectations they helped set and as a result, the organisation felt the investment of time and money in IT was worth it. Soft skills produced hard results.”

“The CIO Edge is dedicated to these seven leadership skills and their professional and personal payoff,” said Rubenstrunk. “Cynics might argue that CIOs who excel at soft skills might deliver soft results. However, a clear pattern from our interviews showed that the best CIOs, the ones who excel at people leadership, also set the most aggressive goals and hold their people accountable to the highest performance standards.”

Following three years of data-driven research, Waller, Hallenbeck and Rubenstrunk distilled their findings down to the behavioural patterns and key skills they believe to be the most critical to success. Specifically, high-performing CIOs distinguish themselves by mastering the following seven skills:

1. Commit to Leadership First and Everything Else Second
2. Lead Differently than You Think
3. Embrace Your Softer Side
4. Forge the Right Relationships to Drive the Right Results.
5. Master Communication.
6. Inspire Others
7. Build People, Not Systems

The three authors warned CIOs that mastering soft skills can never be a replacement for the key management aspects of the job. It is instead a powerful enabler and an amplifying force that allows individuals to exceed expectations and maximise the value from IT.

“All CIOs must deliver results. What distinguishes the best is how they do it: through people, by people, and with people,” Waller said.