The episode explored the evolving nature of C-level leadership, including CIO/CISO/CDO (chief digital and data officers) and the mindset shifts required for modern executives.

See the full list of The 20+ Leadership Hats CIOs, CISOs, and CDOs Wear.

Participants

• Isaac Sacolick
• Fadi Atiyeh
• Joanne Friedman
• Heather May
• Joseph Puglisi
• Martin Davis
• John Patrick Luethe

Summary

The discussion opened with reflections on the complex demands of C-level roles, emphasizing the need for leaders to balance time, priorities, and multiple personas. Participants highlighted that effective leaders must adopt both strategic and operational perspectives while fostering collaboration and managing conflicts among strong team members.

Key themes included the transformation of CIO and CISO roles amid digital transformation and AI adoption. These positions are no longer purely technical and now require strategic influence, governance expertise, and an understanding of broader business risk and growth. The importance of communication, simplifying executive updates, and effectively representing technology to boards were recurring points.

The episode also examined personal leadership growth. Speakers shared lessons from their own transitions from technical to business leadership, underscoring the value of mentorship, public speaking practice, professional networking, and embracing mistakes as learning tools. Developing interpersonal awareness and adaptability—especially for more introverted leaders—was seen as critical to attaining executive effectiveness.

Later sections focused on meeting and communication strategies. Participants emphasized reading the room, timing comments strategically, and listening attentively before contributing. The ability to discern different meeting roles—facilitator, contributor, or observer—was presented as a key executive skill.

The session concluded by encouraging continued participation in future discussions on topics such as co-creation, AI agents, and cross-departmental collaboration, while also sharing informal updates about upcoming travel and recruiting initiatives within the community.

Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey everyone.

Welcome to this week’s coffee with digital trailblazers. This Friday, October 17th. It’s getting chilly out here in New York and I’m so glad that you’re here.

We’re going to be talking today about shape shifting, the cio, ciso, cdo, both data and digital officers, ability to wear many hats and, and adapt Personas to lead in every situation.

And I’ve been really excited about this one. Joe actually suggested it, I think it was three or four weeks ago and I debated whether or not people would be interested and whether we could carry such a topic. And I will tell you, I tried very hard to get some new guests on this week and it’s been a little bit challenging.

And one of the reasons is that CIOs, CISOs and CDOs cannot easily shape shift and be in multiple time zones in multiple locations at the same time. They’re all very, very busy people.

And I think I got at least a half a dozen people come back to me and say they could not make this particular episode.

It’s probably that time of year if you don’t know a lot about the role of the cio, CISO or cdo. Many them are budgeting, many of them are trying to finish out that before November and the holiday season’s begun and that’s where we are.

So we have one special guest we’re trying to build.

Have him join us. His name is Fadi. I have not met him, but he is having some technical difficulties joining our Zoom connection. So I’m hoping that he’ll be able to do this.

He has Heather has him on speaker. Oh, that’ll be really interesting. That’s really low tech, Heather. I don’t know if that’s going to work.

There is a phone number in the meeting invite for any of you that have the meeting invites on my speaker list and you may be able to copy it and paste it into the chat or send it to Heather to see if we can go low, slightly above speaker to speaker and see if we can get bodies comments in. But for those of you are here, I am thrilled to have you join us. And we have a still have a full house. We still have Heather here. John, Joe Martner are here. I suspect we will see Joanne join fairly soon.

And this week we are talking about the challenges that sea levels in technology, security, data and digital have. And one of the reasons I’m really excited to be talking about this today is that one of the questions I almost always get from people who I would just call aspiring C level leaders.

They are maybe direct reports and often not direct reports, secondary direct reports.

And they get enamored by the, you know, just the, the title and the position of being a C level leader. And they aspire to be one.

Not necessarily knowing what the job entails and not necessarily knowing what, what the demands are. And I will tell you the two single biggest demands on any C level person is prioritizing their time and being able to wear different hats at different times. And so my first question here is just about that. It’s the question of when and how do we think about what Persona we have to play at any given moment.

And I’ve listed several Personas here from crisis manager to budget salesperson. That means being able to come up with what your budget is and being able sell it into the organization and get buy in around it being a change leader. I am sure I’m going to hear from Martin about that one. An empathetic team leader, communicator. I’m sure Joe’s going to have some comments around that one.

Dr. No, I have a feeling that if Derek could join us today, he would be talking about when do you have to say no to things and when you have to say yes but to things.

So before we get started about how do we handle wearing these different hats and what to do about them, I want to make sure we get the comprehensive list really for those of you who are in C level roles or aspire to be ones, what are the different ones? And so I’ve listed a few here. Martin, John, we’ll start with you guys and then we’ll see if Fadi is able to speak up. But what are the other hats that I’m missing and why they’re important to consider. For those of you listening on LinkedIn, do say hello. I do love the comments that come up here. Hello Dean, thank you for joining. And, and do ask, you know, contribute. Tell us what some of your different hats that you’re wearing as a C level leader. Martin, what am I missing on my list? And, and what should you know your, your first thoughts around the different roles that we’re playing at different times?

[00:05:39] Speaker C: I think the you’re missing the one at the very, very start of that, the most important one of all.

Oh, can you think what it is?

[00:05:47] Speaker A: Oh, I don’t know. Relationship builder.

[00:05:50] Speaker C: How about visionary business leader?

[00:05:52] Speaker A: All right, go for it. Tell me about that one.

[00:05:56] Speaker C: Basically, yeah, the CIO has to have the view of the whole business. How Technology can support that business and how the business could grow. One of the things I’ve always found is it often has more holistic view of what goes on in the business than the business does because the business tends to be very siloed until you get up to like the CFO, CEO, etc. But the, it can actually go right from that top level right down to the detail, which makes it very unique across the, a lot of the different business functions.

[00:06:32] Speaker A: So when you’re wearing, when should you wear that hat and what does it mean when you’re wearing that hat?

[00:06:38] Speaker C: Well, I think it comes down to, yeah, if you, if you’re at the C level and you’re in discussions, you need to be a business leader. So you always need to be wearing that hat and you always need to view how the whole company is behaving in business. Which is why more recently we’ve seen CIOs step out to be CEOs so and, and COOs as well. And I think it’s, it’s that fact that you need to be able to look at the business from a perspective of how could it be different, how could we change things, how can we improve things? Which then gets into your other things you have there, like being a change lead. And I’ve obviously said many, many times over the years, I spend more time being a change leader than I do playing with technology.

And that’s kind of this whole emphasis around. And we talked about digital leadership, for example. Digital leadership is about connecting those business dots. It’s about business leadership and that’s why a visionary business leader is what a CIO often has to be.

[00:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah, you mentioned CIO becoming a CEO. Joe and I were at the SIM event in Fairfield Westchester yesterday that HMG strategy put on and saw the CEO of Xerox speak. I’ve known him for over 10 years. When I knew him, he was a CIO and a very, very world class CIO. And now he’s the CEO of Xerox. And it is because of his ability to look top down and it’s his ability to wear different hats. I mean he was ahead of a large BPO in one part of his career. He was a VP of Sales in one part of his career. So talk about different hats that he was wearing.

Pretty extraordinary guy. And I’ll let Joe comment more on that experience when he speaks up.

John, what other hats am I missing here?

[00:08:36] Speaker D: Well, I think as people start out, they often start as thought leaders and then they start, then they move into being a Team leader and director, and then they really move into the point where they’re building other people. But then at some point, as you get a lot more senior in the organization, you start spending all your time really trying to have other people that are really smart and really capable interact well with other people.

And so I think a lot of your time really is spent almost being a referee on things. And so it’s is you have a whole organization full of really good people. You have or working with other people and other organizations, and you have all these really smart people. There’s so many different ways to solve problems. A lot of times, unfortunately, I see people’s job at very high levels turning into trying to get really smart people to treat each other well and interact well and. And work through problems in a constructive way. And so I think referee is one of the things that really, as you get more senior, that becomes a large focus of your job.

[00:09:37] Speaker A: I think you actually just mentioned three hats. That’s what I put down on the board here. And to me, being able to shape shift from being a mentor to someone, then actually collaborating them with that person as an equal, and then referring an issue that they’re coming up with and that are maybe in between people and maybe being a facilitator, I think all those come up all the time and being able to recognize the situation and saying, what does this person need at this time in this situation to learn from the experience? Go ahead, John.

[00:10:20] Speaker D: Yeah, and what is fair, like what’s the right thing to do for the business? What’s the right thing to do for the customer? And what’s a fair way to deal with this situation? And so I just, I see that becomes, unfortunately, I see that becomes kind of the major focus of people, like the more senior they get.

[00:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah.

Thanks, John. Let’s go to Joe and then Fadi will bring you to the floor after that.

Okay, Joe.

Joe, you’re on mute.

Joe is still on mute. Fatty, why don’t you say hello to everybody and good morning.

Welcome to the floor as a speaker. Joe. We’ll bring you right back. Fatty. Welcome to the floor. Once you introduce yourself. Welcome to being our guest speaker.

I wanted a CISO on the program today. Derek couldn’t make it. And here is Fatty, who’s been a ceto, I think, multiple times.

And I know a lot of CISOs have to wear a lot of very difficult hats, so I’d love your perspective on my question.

[00:11:21] Speaker E: Yeah, great. Good morning, everyone. Great to be here.

Indeed. CISOs and CIOs, their role continue to expand and morph. You have the traditional role of a cio, where a CIO is really.

[00:11:41] Speaker D: Kind.

[00:11:41] Speaker E: Of overseeing the IT adoption of new technologies and trying to service the business, if you will meet the technical needs of the growth of the organization and the business. And at the same time, you have distributed workforce, you have new technologies that are expanding, you have other verticals that are being adopted within an organization.

And not only is that challenging by itself, but the traditional thought process of a cio, for example, as an IT in general and security as being a cost center, not something at really the heart of the business or a critical business asset, if you will, that’s become very challenging. But things have been changing, especially with the adoption of digital transformation. And also AI has really been an eye opener in terms of roles and responsibilities of both CIOs and CISOs.

And now we are seeing that these roles are evolving from not only IT and security, but also thought leaders, ones that are able to be able to complete the digital transformation, allow the business to grow, be strategic thinkers, you know, allow the business to be more competitive and at the same time look at risk and manage risk across the continuum, especially as more and more businesses go into the cloud and complete that digital transformation, seeing that most businesses are also not just, you know, on prem or cloud, but also hybrid. So that, that presents a challenge by itself.

[00:13:48] Speaker A: Thank you. Fadi. I want you to maybe go a level deeper and let me be illustrative by example. Let’s say I’m.

I’ll just play out a week of being a CIO for me at different times, and I might walk in Monday and have to respond to a crisis because a bunch of systems were down over the weekend and my team didn’t recover them fast enough. And a couple of executives want to know what root cause was and how we’re going to fix the issue.

Tuesday morning, I might be in a budget planning meeting.

I might be hearing some challenges to new things that business leaders want to do in the coming year that they did not request IT support on in terms of what the implications are on technology and security.

And now I have to be a facilitator about what, you know, what type of investment is this? Is it something that’s additive?

You know, how do I want to coach my colleagues and into making sure that what they’re asking for is in fact a priority in getting IT involved in scoping out solutions. By Wednesday, I might be meeting with my compliance teams or asking my innovations teams for too much too fast and slowing my ability to do AI and trying to get too many details answered up front and I’m dealing with a situation around that. On Thursday I might be dealing with a vendor who is underperforming and on Friday three people have come in to my office asking for vacation for the next two weeks and I have to decide where I want to be empathetic and where I want to be a referee.

So that might be different hats I’m wearing during the course of the week. I’d love your perspective from a ciso. What are some of the things that you might face during the week where you really have to know what your situation is and what your hat is wearing at that time? Go ahead, Fadi.

[00:15:58] Speaker E: Great example, incidentally.

Interestingly, there is a saying within it that you live and die by governance and what you’ve just highlighted in terms of the example, most of it really comes down to having great governance in an organization.

CISOs are not any different. When systems are down, obviously the CISOs are going to be right there and they are working hand in hand collaboratively with CIOs and the IT teams to bring these systems back up.

We’re at the forefront of ensuring that departments within an organization, as an example, are not doing things on their own, but rather working through the governance process, for example, to bring in vendors and apply different applications within that continuum of governance. Right. So that we’re not behind the eight ball both from infrastructure and technology, but also from a cybersecurity security posture of these vendors and CISOs. We also have individuals and teams that we have to deal with and we have again vendors that we have to assess and validate. So these are all incredibly valid examples and these are real things that we have to manage on a daily basis.

And then that list continues to expand and especially again with the digital transformation and now AI on top of IT and the adoption, the quick adoption of AI and how AI continues to also change and morph and its infrastructure and its how it’s being adopted, the use cases that are being brought in really is a challenging structure that you have to deal with on a daily basis. CIOs and CISOs and to a lesser extent also CDOs. If, if there are such individuals in larger organizations, most likely they have to deal with all of what you’ve outlined.

Incidentally, just to the previous comment that was made about it being at the forefront of an organization, I’ve done many business continuity exercises and typically business continuity it is at the forefront of that because they are in the know of virtually every department and every application that’s out there where many departments are siloed and they are, you know, verticals.

It typically has a relatively good view and visibility of the entire organization and the business.

[00:19:22] Speaker A: Fadi I love the idea of introducing business continuity driver. Some organizations have risk management functions around that and even when they do, they need collaborators between the CIO and CISO in particular. And other times it’s going to fall into the, you know, collaboration between the CIO and CISO to make sure disaster recovery is rehearsed and business continuity has a plan around it and so many good reasons to be able to have that. Thank you for your comments. Fady. We’re going to bring up Joe now.

Joe, you’re free to expand on my comments from yesterday and of course I’d love to hear your perspective on which hats you’ve had to wear that we haven’t covered.

[00:20:07] Speaker B: I’m going to give you three.

Martin took the fourth, which was leader innovator and he did a good job on that. Fadi outlined a lot of perhaps overlapping concepts, but I’m going to give you three that you don’t have on your board yet. The first is ambassador.

You are a representative of, of not only yourself but your department and your company.

And you are the PR agent. You are the face of it that can be outward facing, such as being on a panel at a CIO summit and sharing your wisdom and stories about success or ways in which things could have gone better in the past or it may be and this is probably more often, you are the face of it internally in your organization, representing the department to other parts of the organization, whether they be senior management department heads or even in a town hall where you might have to present what’s going on with it in the company. So you’re an ambassador. That’s number one. Number two, you’re a translator.

You must be bilingual. You must speak the language of business as well as the language of technology in order to more effectively communicate with the business leaders, with customers, with vendors and with your own staff.

We heard Steve Banterchuk yesterday when he said how did I rise to the role of CEO coming out of the CIO role for many years? And he said, I learned that management, the company’s really concerned about two things, right? They want to make money and they want to minimize risk.

Those have, have very little to do with knowledge of technology. They have to do all about bottom line finances and, and, and risk mitigation.

So being able to speak the language of business and translate the Business needs into technology solutions and vice versa is paramount.

Third and final on my list.

You have to be a negotiator.

This is when you are dealing with budget. How do I get justify and execute more effectively?

This is around staff issues, not only getting headcount, but keeping headcount, keeping those interpersonal issues to a minimum, mitigating disputes and then with management. Isaac, I believe earlier you mentioned priority, being able to prioritize. Well, that’s a, that’s a negotiating skill. If you can get people to agree to defer some projects in lieu of others, which may be more important. Everyone thinks their project is the most important and so negotiating is, is pretty important.

So those were the three I came up with. Ambassador, translator and negotiator.

[00:23:10] Speaker A: I’m going to comment here on translator. You know the.

Joe, remind me the name of the IBM fellow who spoke last.

[00:23:20] Speaker B: D’. Onofrio.

[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah, he, he, you know, you could tell why he’s been, you know, he rose to the ranks through IBM. 40 years there he’s on the board of AMD and the first thing that he answered to Hunter around how sea levels can, you know, have a better relationship with the board, which none of us have mentioned here yet, is developing that high level relationship. And he used the word simplify as his first word. And we’ve talked, you and I have talked about this for a long time, how you cannot bring jargon to the table, particularly at the board level and even at the executive level. And but you know, there’s a lot of complexities in technology and there’s a lot of things that CEOs read on airplanes, as we used to say.

You know, now it’s showing up in their mailboxes, on their phones and, and everywhere else that they’re reading material. And you know, I think what we all want to prevent the CIO from becoming is a squirrel chaser and being able to go after everything everybody wants. And that requires being an ambassador, being a negotiator and being a translator. I can’t think of, of any three that I would put together that really exemplifies how hard of a role it Is and what CIOs all the time.

[00:24:46] Speaker B: I got to tell you one quick story if I may.

You know, I sit on the board of MTAC and there are some MIT participants in the SIM community who volunteered their time at my request to effect a migration to the cloud for this organization.

It’s a relatively small project. It’s not going to take very long and the team are doing a really Good job.

But I now find myself in the position of being the board member who wants to know how the project is going.

And unconsciously, in a quick phone call in less than 10 minutes the other day, I just blurted out, literally blurted out to the team, don’t tell me what I want to hear. Tell me what I need to know. Are we on track or not?

And the deer in the headlights look was. Was palpable. Right.

You know, they were prepared to give me chapter and verse of step by step, how things are going and which is working, which is not. And I didn’t need to know that.

All I need to know is, are we going to make it or not?

[00:25:57] Speaker A: I love that. That’s my quote for board collaborator later being able to tell them what they need to know. Love that answer.

Let’s bring Heather to the floor. We’ll bring back John after that. Heather, for those of you in, you know, Joe dropped the acronym mit. If you don’t know that acronym. It stands for Member in Transition.

It is a SIM program for those who are in between jobs. And he’s been leading efforts around that for SIM for I don’t know how long. Joe, but Heather, you’re an executive recruiter. You’ve brought in CISO, CIOs, CDOs.

And what. How do you answer the question, like, what hats that you test for, that you look for when evaluating whether a CIO or a CISO is ready for the job at hand?

[00:26:53] Speaker F: Part of it is, and I love something that Martin said about common sense is not so common, but sometimes it really is important to think about, not about the role specifically and just in general. You want someone with curiosity, you want someone who can listen. You want someone with empathy. And when I was hearing about some of the other hats that people should be wearing, the notion of teacher came to mind. I have an education elementary ed degree. And when you’re in a classroom, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you. You don’t know how the kids are going to respond. You’re not going to know how you. How many times. You’re going to have to explain the same thing differently.

Whether people are, you know, auditory learners or they have neurodeficiencies. So you want to be able to explain things in multiple different ways. And then when you were talking about your job, your day and day in the life, or the week in the life, I was thinking of Juggler.

So it’s so much about listening and being creative. So those are the things that I absolutely look for and have you done it before? And if you have done it, how do you, have you been a ciso? How did you, what were some of the stories and the explanations of what you’ve done? So storytelling is really is critical. And how did you fail and what did you do to fix it?

[00:28:15] Speaker A: Foreign let’s talk about fail for a second. I mean that’s kind of an interesting one to bring up. What, how do I characterize that hat, Heather?

[00:28:26] Speaker F: I, I think it’s someone in the exercise class who gets on their feet again after they’ve fallen down.

[00:28:33] Speaker A: I, you know, what comes to my mind is the, you know, the best word I can come with is retrospective leader.

You know, somebody who is not waiting for the postmortem and is constantly teaching to your point to make sure that people are not looking at something that missed as a, as a fail and always looking at as a chance to learn.

So I, I think that’s a very interesting one.

Let’s bring Martin back. Martin, what hat hats are we missing? And then we’re going to jump into our next question after that.

[00:29:07] Speaker C: So I think an unusual one I would and it’s almost that failure one in a different form is shield as in the ability to actually take it on the chin from the leadership team and protect your team from it.

[00:29:24] Speaker A: I think that’s worth, that’s really important.

[00:29:27] Speaker C: Because at the end of the day, yeah, at the end of the day you don’t want your team to become demotivated by problems they’re having. And they could be not of their making. They could be external consequences. It could be lack of business, resource, whatever. But sometimes the CIO just has to take it on the chin.

[00:29:46] Speaker A: I think it’s a great one. We’re going to come back to our next question after our break.

Our next question is going to be really about how digital trailblazers learn to lead in situations that are outside their strengths and comfort zones.

I mentor a whole bunch of aspiring CTOs and CIOs, some CISOs and some CDOs and every one of them look at themselves in the mirror and second second guess themselves because they haven’t dealt with a blow up meeting or they haven’t really spent enough time in front of customers and understand that experience.

Been speaking at an event. Joe mentioned being an ambassador. I think that’s a really important skill set for CIOs. And then just being able to learn technologies and securities outside of your core strengths. You know, technology is ever changing. Very few of us are true AI. Experts. And if you’re in the C level role, you need to be able to lead your organization through AI strategy and AI governance.

For those of you who do not know what I do for a day living, let me just introduce one aspect of Star cio.

We have the Star CIO Digital Trailblazer community.

Many of the people who are speaking here or who have spoken in the past are experts at the community.

The community has an Advisory Connect program where you do a little bit of learning and then you get access to, to a leader, a bat phone to a leader so that you can ask questions relevant to your job. That’s all part of the Digital Trailblazer community and I invite you to learn more about it by visiting stardrive.starcio.com join and you’ll learn more about our community.

And we’ve got a whole bunch of new programming coming this quarter and next year around that I forgot to paste in the upcoming coffee hours. I’m going to get that next and make sure our whiteboard has the latest ones. We have two coming up that I’ve announced. I will announce those at the very end. But let’s just jump right into our next question. John, you’re raising your hand first. John, the reason I’m asking this question again is because many of our aspiring leaders recognize there’s gaps in their experiences, there’s gaps in their knowledge.

There’s the type of things that when confronted in real time, scare the jeepers out of them. And again, just referencing the event that Joe and I were at yesterday, someone asked the question how many of the CIOs CISOs in the room were introverts? And I think about two thirds of us raised our hands.

That’s just the general situation. Most of us are introverts.

We are put into leadership situations that bring us out of our comfort zones and there’s experiences that we have to deal with that for the first time are first timers for us. So my question for everybody, everybody’s going to get a crack at this is how do you learn to lead in situations that are outside of your strengths and comfort zones? Go ahead, John.

[00:33:00] Speaker D: I, I think just the nature of the career progression is this is going to put people into positions where they’re just, they’re not strong and they’re not experts and they don’t have background. And the only, the only way to do that usually where the gaps are on the leadership side. A lot of times people come in with enough of the kind of the, the tech background. But, but the, the Gap is often on the leadership side. And, and the, the only way to become a, in my mind, to become a better leader is, is making mistakes, coaching and just spending time being a leader. And so I, I think you have to surround yourself with really good mentors. You have to like, if you have more or more of a, like more pressing issues, I think you actually have to get people that are coaches on this one and you, you have to figure out where your weak spots are and you have to work with professionals and people that, that will invest time in you to get to where you need to be.

[00:33:51] Speaker A: So you’re suggesting people invest in coaches and I would say perform, you know, more importantly, really perform. Role playing. Yeah, right. Get, get into that situation and get surprised by that situation and you know, practice gets you there. Martin, what are your suggestions for everybody?

[00:34:10] Speaker C: Well, when I was developing through my career, yeah, obviously a lot of these things is practice makes perfect.

Put yourself in situations where you can try things and sometimes that might be outside the workplace.

So, yeah, I actually very deliberately volunteered at a charity radio station so that I got used to speaking to an audience. I got used to speaking to a microphone and then later on I also did kind of outside broadcast things with that radio station thing. So speaking with a live audience in front of you and also volunteered present at a small conference to start with and things like this because all of these things help you develop your ability to actually talk and speak and deal with situations such as if you’re presenting to a board, the more confident you are as a speaker, for example, and the ability to deal with questions on the fly, the better it will come across. So look for ways you can volunteer at a. I say I use the example of a charity radio station, but yeah, it might be a not for profit in some other form where you can practice your leadership in a safer environment.

So look at different ways that you can develop yourself.

[00:35:31] Speaker A: Martin, go back to earlier in your career. What is one of the hats that you really had to learn in practice that just wasn’t in your natural repertoire before you became a cio?

[00:35:43] Speaker C: Well, I think I was, I think my.

They kind of. I’m kind of an extrovert, but it’s. It’s kind of an introvert with an extrovert coat on almost. So it’s that kind of self belief, not having the kind of imposter syndrome, I think it’s the word.

So it was actually coming out of that shell, developing myself and my ability to actually speak up and be part of what is going on. And drive things.

[00:36:13] Speaker A: I think every one of us has had to deal with that in some form of another at some point in their career. It’s like, am I really ready for this? Is this really the right career projection for me?

I will tell you, my DNA was in architecture, it was in software development. And I quickly learned that when I became C level that those weren’t the things that I had to negotiate over. That was no longer my job.

And I think that’s probably one of the hardest things when you grow into that C level role is to shift, shed some of the responsibilities and acumen that you feel pretty strong on and become more broad in your understanding and learning. Otherwise you just never gain that business acumen. You never, if you’re an operator, you never learn innovation. If you’re an innovation, you never learn operations and governance. Joe, same question.

You do a lot of mentoring. So A, you’re how do you coach people around this? And then B, what did you have to learn when you became C level?

[00:37:22] Speaker B: Well, John and Martin both came up with great ideas, find mentors, volunteer for organizations. So my first advice is joint sim, develop a network of peers and attend conferences. And, and there are ways, I mean, whether it’s SIM or another professional organization, I happen to favor sim.

You get to participate in great conversations. You can be on a panel or you could just listen and learn from other people.

But I, I, that that’s sort of a follow on to John and, and Martin’s combined idea.

I have advice for people and, and this is what I learned over the years. Isaac Rcat, you’ve heard me say this before.

Rcaat, this is the most important thing that you have to learn. And it means remain calm at all times.

Don’t panic. And there are two things that you really need to, to, to adopt.

Honesty and confidence.

Honesty means you can’t fake it until you make it.

If you don’t know, say I don’t know. But follow that up with the confidence statement that you will find out, you will learn, you will come up with a solution and then follow through it. It took me a while, but that was, I think that was probably the thing I took away most from lesson the other, the other thing is to very quickly tell you a story about when I was first at the management table. This is back in the Blair McGovern days. So this is early 90s and I was asked a question by one of the senior managers and I went on for probably three minutes in technobabble.

And at the end of the three minutes all I had was a room full of glazed eyes. And they went on to the next topic afterwards. The, the head of the company, Jimmy, Nice guy, he pulled me aside and he said, you got to learn how to answer a question in a much simpler fashion because nobody knew what the heck you said. And so the next management meeting a month later, someone asked me a question and I took a deep breath and said, jim, I’m going to muster all of the energy I have and put it into following your advice.

And my answer is no.

[00:39:53] Speaker A: Joe. I tell that story in digital Trailblazer. It’s actually one of the key lessons I learned in my very first board meeting. And I tell that story. It was very painful and at the time, but.

And it’s something that those who have really been in the weeds most of their career and now they’re C level roles, you know, their, their natural instinct is to go through the entire process of how something works before they answer somebody’s question.

And when you’re working at the executive level, that is the absolute wrong thing to do, you know, and you really have to do what you just suggested. Take a pause, let your brain catch up, understand who’s asking what and why, and just answer the question and then look for their response or their body language to suggest whether or not or what details to really include.

And if you don’t master that skill, you don’t. You just, you know, people just won’t ask you questions anymore. And that’s problematic.

[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yes. I didn’t know I was in your book. Do I get royalties?

[00:41:06] Speaker A: You could get royalties if you have book royalties. I’ll send you some change.

We could go play a space invader game going back to the old days. Who had their hand up, John? You had your hand up.

[00:41:20] Speaker D: Yeah. The question you have to ask is, hey, has anybody died on this bad thing that happened? And, and if the, the question is, is. Is if nobody’s died, everyone can take a deep breath and then we can work through this issue.

[00:41:31] Speaker A: Has anybody died? So we’re like putting things in perspective, right? I mean, that’s what we’re really getting at is like a step beyond don’t panic. I think, you know, the way I think about that one, John, is like, you know, your business stakeholders will sometimes come to you with their perspective that, yes, somebody died, their customers are angry, you know, there’s lost revenue, they didn’t make their number, all these kinds of things that come up and you know it’s going to make something feel a lot worse than it is. And being calm and just realizing your job is to manage the situation at hand relative to its criticality.

It’s part of being a crisis manager. Just focus on the problem in hand and work yourself out of it. I think that’s an important skill set and not easy for somebody who’s, you know, maybe not had an operating role to work through. I want to bring Fadi back. Fadi, you still here?

Give me a chance to talk about your skills that you had to learn, your hats that you had to learn. And then how should others learn them as well?

[00:42:45] Speaker E: Sure.

Especially coming from technical backgrounds.

Often many CISOs and CIOs struggle with the business aspects.

I try to personally bring it to a basic level first, understanding the business mission and vision statement of the business.

At the end of the day, we’re here to support a business, right? Create value, enhance trust, drive innovation, really align with customer experience, essentially support the business growth and competitive advantage and so forth.

That can only be done if we’re not only strategic thinkers, but also collaborators.

So I had to focus on collaborative strategies. How do I learn the various aspects of the business?

And the only way to do that is to really collaborate and be cooperative with other leaders.

We have a concept with our company.

It’s referred to as servant leaders.

So if you’re leader, you’re also a servant in many respects to organization, both leaders as well as contributing members.

And that engenders empathy, humble thoughts.

That also then allows you to focus on personal skills, interpersonal skills such as presentation skills, communication skills. All of these really then coalesce together to really help you become a more empathetic leader and the leader that the business values as you move forward and progress can.

[00:44:50] Speaker A: Fatty. Can you elaborate on one thing that I see as a sort of a dark spot for some new CISOs and how to, you know, let’s use this, you know, this idea of shapeshifting around this. You know, CISOs are known for being Dr. No and trying to put the brakes on something that’s heading down to. Into the cavity of risk or security issue or compliance factor, you know, and CISOs, therefore, because they’re accountable for anything that can go wrong. If you really want to understand the CISO role, they tend to try to prioritize a lot.

Right. You know, let’s focus on patch management and iam. And we need some, you know, some governance, better governance around data security. And before you know it, it’s, you know, going to the board with 15 things that you can’t possibly execute on. So tell me about two hats that you have to manage as a ciso. One is being able to prioritize and the ability to turn a no into a yes but or how.

[00:46:03] Speaker E: Yes. Certainly.

CISOs, just like any other leader, also face the same challenges in terms of resources.

I’m sorry.

[00:46:18] Speaker D: Cool.

[00:46:23] Speaker E: Some feedback there.

[00:46:24] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead, Fadi.

[00:46:26] Speaker E: Okay. So CISOs face the same challenges that many other leaders face. You know, we still have to live within a budget. We still have resource constraints.

And as an organization, obviously, you’re there to translate the risk. And you can come an outcast very quickly if you’re not really in. Tuned into the business objectives and be able to balance all of these needs so you can make the organization incredibly secure but hamper business objectives. And obviously, that’s a no win in either case. So you have to learn how to balance the business requirements and the risk.

And we, as CISOs, we take on risk, obviously, but cybersecurity is not a CISO issue issue. It’s an organizational strategic issue.

So as part of our role is to really help the organization understand the risk for the organization. And often when that’s done effectively, then strategies and how you adopt both technology as well as culturally can become easier. You know, we say technology sometimes is about 30% of the work and 70% is people culture. That’s where CISOs, you know, strive to make changes, because these are the. The vulnerabilities and gaps that get us in trouble often. Right. People and the way we do things, so many of these gaps that we have to live with, you know, the needs of other.

The business and other organizations that we have to balance.

And often you’re right. You know, we go in and we say we need these tools and these processes to change and these business processes that we either have to completely do away with or we have to find a different way of doing them. And at times, that’s not realistic because of the business requirements.

So you have to, again, take what you can and be balanced in how you’re measuring risk realistically.

And sometimes as you go in and foster the risk and risk tolerance within the organization, you take on more risk and say, all right, it’s within our tolerance. That’s what we have to do. Now. We can’t implement this. We cannot have this tool or this process, but it still keeps us within our risk tolerance, and this is a way of moving forward and again, enabling the business.

[00:49:30] Speaker A: Thank you, Fadi. I want to go around the room in our last 10 minutes and really address this last question about reading the TLC leaves.

And let me Give everybody a perspective that you should answer to if it should not surprise anyone on the call, on anyone who’s listening or anybody who’s speaking that C level. Spend a lot of time in their, in meetings. Okay. Most of their time in meetings.

And some of them you have a direct role in, some of them you’ve called in. Very often you are walking into a meeting where an agenda is not necessarily formally set as well it should be, and that you may not be perfectly prepared for because you’ve been back to back, you just got off a plane, your last two meetings went over and you walked in.

And you need to be able to read the tea leaves and know what hat you’re wearing for this particular meeting.

I think the harder question is when you come in expecting to be wearing a specific hat. Maybe I’m coming into this meeting and I think I’m going to be, you know, a negotiator or selling a budget or an ambassador or maybe a translator. And then I start listening to the first three, four minutes of what people are talking about and realize, oh, this is not that type of meeting. We have to be pivoting because I have to pivot my approach because, you know, there’s been an outage in a particular part of the organization or a security issue or there’s a customer complaining and this is the wrong time and place for me to be coming to. Everybody around in an innovation or an investment. So when I go around the room, Martin, we’ll start with you. We’ll go to Joe. I’m going to be unfair with my most seasoned experienced executives here, Martin and Joe.

Martin, how do you read the room and know what hat you’re wearing in the meeting that you’re working for, walking into?

[00:51:29] Speaker C: Well, I think the first thing is take look around the room, be careful who is in there.

Yeah. If, for example, you’re expecting a C level meeting and everybody sent delegates, that could be a very different discussion to the one you were expecting. Because rather than a strategic discussion, all of a sudden it could get very tactical and be. Instead of a maybe a future strategy and what are we going to do? Such discussion can be sudden, suddenly become a. Why have you not fixed this kind of discussion? So read who’s in there, Read the tone of the room. You know, what’s the, Are people smiling? Are people looking unhappy? Are they looking uncomfortable? Yeah. Is the CEO in there and there’s fire coming out of his ears?

[00:52:17] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:52:18] Speaker C: Take careful note of the, the body language, what’s being said, who is there but Be prepared to pivot and don’t be afraid to say I was not aware of that or I don’t have the details with me. Allow me to come back to you with those because most C level execs would far rather that you tell the truth rather than BS them with made up excuses because you don’t actually know the facts.

[00:52:54] Speaker A: I am taking that, I’m taking that right down here. I think that’s, that’s a key lesson for everybody. I mean, I used to walk into meetings with as much detail as I could, particularly around initiatives and the state of the operations.

But that really only covers maybe 60 or 70% of what I may be asked for at any given time.

And you know, it’s very easy to tell when somebody’s waffling. I mean, you know, if a salesperson can’t answer, head of sales can’t answer what, you know, what’s the prospect for the next order? Their better answer is, let me get back to you on that.

Although that’s an answer they should really have at the first, at the fingertips, I’d rather hear the head of sales say that than waffle their way through and answer around it. I think that’s really good advice, Joe. And then we’ll go to John. Joe, how are you reading the tea leaves when you walk into the room?

[00:53:48] Speaker B: Well, first I want to say Martin’s spot on, right? Because I cited earlier that honesty was critical. Remain calm and tell the truth. Don’t try to fake it. So I completely agree with, with Martin’s comment.

Ratios are important.

Ask more than you tell, listen more than you speak.

That’s my advice. When you get into a meeting, the best way to read the room is shut up and listen.

And when someone asks a question, if you don’t have the perfect answer, or even if you think you have the perfect answer, maybe you probe a little bit and make sure that you’re answering the question they asked or you’re providing the information that they want.

So my advice is listen more than you speak and ask more than you tell.

[00:54:38] Speaker A: Joe, I’m going to give you one more along those lines because CIOs and CISOs rarely the first person they’re being asked directly in a meeting unless there’s a crisis or something like that, or if they were, you know, scheduled to present. I think the more likely and at least more often situation I know I found myself in is that another executive has brought up a situation and I feel compelled to comment on it and speak up.

And I think that’s where the discipline comes in, where you don’t need to be responding to every situation and to every comment. Sit back, somebody else might do the work. Work for you. It may not be the issue at hand that, that the, the group really wants to discuss, and you’re better off waiting for other people to step in before you start firing on all cylinders.

[00:55:32] Speaker B: I think you’re spot on.

I always use that technique now at board meetings where, hey, I’m not the chair. I don’t feel compelled to chime in on every single comment that anybody makes. Makes. But what I do like to do is sort of lay back in the weeds and listen to everybody’s arguments.

And when everyone has had their say, then I might voice an opinion and I’ll take into account, you know, which side it seems like most people are landing on, which side seems like the most reasonable. In fact, our, our good mutual friend put on my LinkedIn profile based on my performance at board meetings for the sim chapter.

She said, you are the voice of reason.

[00:56:20] Speaker A: Did you see what I just wrote down? I said, joe’s a facilitator and you’re playing to your strengths, right?

[00:56:25] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:56:26] Speaker A: Right. And I think that’s the note for everybody here, is to know what your strengths are, but don’t, don’t avoid being the bull in the room. I mean, that’s, you know, and if you are jumping on every single issue and have something to say about every single thing that comes up, that’s, that’s going to put you in harm’s way more than you need to be.

And sometimes it’s just better to stay back and lay back and let the cards play on the table a little bit. Got a few minutes left. I want to hear from John and then Heather and then we’ll close out. John.

[00:57:00] Speaker D: I like to ask, hey, what are we trying to solve here? And that can be, if we’re going into a meeting and there’s no clear agenda, we might as well just ask that. Or if something is brought up and maybe doesn’t seem appropriate, like, why are we having this discussion in this meeting?

It’s appropriate then to say, what are we really trying to solve here? What do we actually have to solve in this meeting?

Mentally, the next part of it has to be like, okay, if we’ve decided what we’re trying to solve, do we have the right people to solve it?

And then if you’re trying to think about whether or not you should respond to a meeting, a comment made in the meeting, the question is, who owns this area and if you don’t own this area and it’s not directly impacting you, it’s best just to stay silent.

[00:57:44] Speaker A: I like those. I think the general recommendation here, John, is come armed with your standard questions that you’re willing to ask particularly if the meeting is going all over the place.

And I love this one. What are we trying to solve for here? Because it plays to those of us who have engineering background, strengths.

The decision maker is equally good one because chances are we are not the decision maker and there’s probably some, you know, elephant in the room that has multiple stakeholders trying to chime in here. And so you know who the decision maker I think is a really good one. Heather, you getting the last word today and I’d love to hear your perspective. How do you read the room? You’ve been in sales, you’ve been in support, you’ve been, you run your own company, you work with executives. How do you read the room?

[00:58:33] Speaker F: Well, I try not to perseverate on any given topic because if you’re going around and around and around, some likely is that nothing is going to get solved. I tend to use the ping pong method. I said, she said, I said, he said, I said, he said done that. Because if you keep going back and forth, nothing gets resolved and if you have to schedule it for another time you’re focusing only on that topic, then you can get a resolution. And I think finally it’s always about how you deliver the message, how you deliver your questions. If you’re going to be antagonistic, if you’re going to be, get your, get your backup, do rcad, whatever, take a breath, whatever it is. But the messaging is, is just as important, important as the words that you’re using.

[00:59:17] Speaker A: And Heather, how are you reading the room? Like you’ve been in your prior life. You’re essentially in sales and same thing happens to an executive. Walk into a meeting, you think it’s meeting X and it’s really meaning why. How do you read the room that you’re in? The you have to change hats.

[00:59:34] Speaker F: I do so much listening because you can assume something and you know what that does and you have to say, okay, what is the predominant topic here? What is the predominant view here? And you have to, even though you have a conviction, you have to be willing to change.

[00:59:51] Speaker A: Great advice everybody. We talk about the different hats that our C levels lead.

For those of you aspiring to the role, I hope you’ve taken notes about what areas that you should be focusing on and then maybe got a little bit of insights of how to read the room a little bit better.

I will be converting this to a blog post so if you missed some of the notes around the different hats we all have to wear, I will have that in a blog post to follow up.

But I do want to see you all here at our next episodes of the Coffee hours. On the 24th we’ll be talking about the co creation mandate, how partnerships accelerate innovations and talent readiness.

On the 31st we’ll be be talking about AI agents at work and we’ll really be talking about the IT and HR alliance to Drive Adoption and value I will tell you I have one episode in November picked out for anybody who knows CTOs in nonprofits doing AI for social good. It will be a special episode somewhere right before Giving Tuesday focusing on nonprofits and talking about where they are experimenting with AI. I am open to suggestions for those of you listening that want to get involved and getting out of your comfort zone. Fadi, I want to thank you for joining us here. I am always looking for guest speakers to join our regular speaker group. If you would like to be a guest speaker, do reach out to me on LinkedIn and just say I want to be a guest speaker on a topic in this category. I will try to fit you in. We have episodes coming up in November, December and into 2026. So do step up and say, hey, I want to be involved. Thanks everybody for being here this week.

Enjoy the weekend. We’ll be back here next week talking about the co creation mandate and you can find your way to the next episode in two different ways. The URL star cio.com coffee next event that URL will always redirect to an upcoming event or you can visit the URL drive.starcio.com Coffee that is a landing page for this event. I have previous episodes there.

I have links to Spotify and Apple podcasts where you can listen to one event every year, one event that I post every month and all the episodes are available to those of you who join the Star CIO Digital Trailblazer community.

There’s also a button there you can click on that will add the event to your calendar so you’ll never miss a live episode. Folks, have a great weekend. I will see you here next week.