Like any other senior executives, CIOs have varies of
personalities and unique leadership strength, no matter you are character-based leader or charismatic executive; a transformational strategist or transactional manager, effective CIOs shall
share some common leadership traits, these traits of a CIO have a significant
effect on culture, mood, motivation, aggressiveness, innovation, helpfulness,
business mindset, creativity, tech depth, skills, emerging tech use, teaming,
rate of change; more broadly, CIO’s leadership influence will directly impact business,
culture education and society.
To brainstorm more specifically, what is the right
personality, personal attributes, and daily mode of operation a CIO must have
to succeed with the people and staff within IT?
1. CIO as an Authentic Business Leader with Strong Will
The spirit of business comes from top, authenticity is
important for CIO and all leaders.A CIO just needs to be him/herself really. We're all
different and unique human beings, so there's nothing to suggest we all have to
be of the same personality. On the other hand, traits such as integrity, trustworthiness and work ethics are traits that should exist in all professionals
rather than just in the CIO.
· The daily
mode of operation should be WILLINGNESS;willing to engage organizational leadership and get buy in on emerging technology and innovation,
as well as engaging staff to impart your overall VISION and the importance of
successfully completing projects and tasks on time and within budget.
·
Being
Authentic is Influential: CIOs influence is based on persuasive communication, via logic, analysis & synthesis, but being persuasive need be authentic, convincing and consistent. A CIO as
an authentic leader will positively effect people and staff of IT through
management style, work ethics, fairness, aggressiveness, forgiving, knowledge,
efficiency, calm control, approachability, ability to succeed, & caring, using social media and technologies at work,and the relationship of IT and business.
2. CIO as an Insightful Strategist with Vision
Leadership is the ability to paint a picture of a better
tomorrow. This might be a role of influencing the CEO to make the jump to a new
technology. This might be a role of getting a team to work longer, harder, more
efficiently and/or more effectively than even that team thought possible
·
As a
Business Visionary: The impact the vision of a leader has on the
environment in which they operate. This might be a role of effectively
communicating organizational decisions, in a way which not only allows those
decisions to be accepted but inspires teams to clearly see the picture of a
better tomorrow. It may be providing the vision because of an intimate
understanding of the business and communicating that vision in a way in which
the picture becomes clear to those who can provide direction, funding and/or
permission to execute the vision to the benefit of the organization
·
As a
Business Strategist – understand your environment and playing field to
develop a plan to harness the opportunities you identified. When the CIO is in
charge of a forward-looking organization that needs/expects a lot from
technology, the style of the CIO needs to be more of a strategic partner/vision
designer. He/she needs to be a trusted partner to the business areas who
understands the business and communicates well with others.
3. CIO as an Empathic Talent Master
CIOs should also have deep mentoring capabilities - not just
for the IT team, but for organization. CIO can also empower talent to achieve
more. CIO's personality should be
engaging, whereby it provides purpose, direction, motivation, guidance, invokes
thought, and calls the staff into action. If done properly, just get out of the
way and allow your staff to WOW you with their creativity and energy.
·
A special
accent in CIO leadership is the ability to inspire the team function. A
good portion of the CIO's team is hard core IT guys or soft touch information gals,
server / storage / cloud / virtualization / network specialists or
data/process/application designer/analyst/architect. A majority of the folks
are introvert geeks living to a big part in the IT fancy land of bit & byte
or the smart world of machine intelligence. And they need to be this way to be dedicated
specialists in their trade.
·
Talent
Engagement: Where the CIO comes to play is to find a way how to lead gurus
or geeks, how to build a team out of well shaped individuals, how to find a way
to further shape the modern IT processionals as the corporation needs them; to
inspire them not to burn out or get unmotivated, to make them leave their
comfort shell and approach the users, the process ... the business. To look through
the IT team and to see through the talents ... that's what a must for a CIO
that is right in the place to have right talent in the bus.
·
Empower
talent for cross-functional collaboration. It is important that the
CIO spends time to learn the dynamics of team culture and the organization
where it is embedded most valuable for the CIO role and that is to know the
teams, then he/she will be able to maximize the synergies and avoid duplication
of efforts. CIOs can work more closely with HR & talent managers to provide
a digital platform, empower talent for cross-functional collaboration.
4. CIO as Innovative Change Agent
Since the CIO is a senior level executive and often a member
of the board, he/she needs to understand business and lead key project to
contribute to business as well as drive the change in the business. The CIO needs to be entrepreneurial. He/she
needs to be a business change agent who can move the company in a direction
that will best identify the company.
· Agile
Mindset & Methodology to Master Complexity: CIOs should be very comfortable in dynamic
situations, secure enough in the knowledge that they may not know EVERYTHING but would LOVE to know as much as they can (a constant learner), being learning agile & and adaptive, as IT leaders usually need
handle the double complexity of both business and technology, and engage talent
into innovative conversation, produce fresh idea, and manage them to achieve
business result.
·
Planning:
by nature of personality, CIO maybe
not so spontaneous when running project or solving complex issues, always take
step-wise action and be thoughtful when practice changes. Truly and totally
know, understand and internalize the paradigm of IT as a service. As an
innovator, CIO's spontaneity comes from the freedom of choices as well as flow
of creativity.
5. CIO as an Intrinsic Customer Champion
Modern CIOs not just serve internal users, but also make
digital impact at every touch point in end customer experience. Thus, CIOs also
need be the intrinsic customer champion, to manage customer relationship based
on the nature of customer and understand of need by putting customers’ shoes
on.
- Business Opportunist – be willing to take the constructive criticism from customers, and turn the beating, lashing, and criticism into opportunities by demonstrating through delivery of successful IT projects that not only benefit the business but gives you a sense of personal satisfaction.
- Customer Empathy: CIOs should be familiar with both business and IT, understand both internal users and external customer, by taking advantage of analytic tools and social platforms, CIOs can master global customer dialects, listen smarter, not just harder, transform IT into business catalyst and customer champion.
As a CIO, one must practice leadership principle, possess a
great work ethic, be comfortable with paradoxical thinking, be knowledgeable,
be decisive, be a team builder, be respected, be available, be a negotiator, be
an innovator, and always a student of emerging technology. The CIO/CTO also must recognize their own strengths and
weaknesses and compensate with either a dose of personal education or by
filling the gaps around them with the right personality mix.
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