How can CISOs succeed with Positive Intelligence for Security Leaders?

Cybersecurity is often viewed as technology problem. It’s true that today’s organisations are dealing with an ever-increasing attack surface, thanks to technology-enabled developments such as cloud computing, remote working and digital transformation, and face new methods of attack from malicious actors. Yet when security leaders talk about their top concerns, what emerges is that their most important priority is to improve how they engage with people — at board level, within their own teams and across the wider workforce.

Without effective communication, engagement and teamworking, security leaders find themselves wrestling with some or all of the following issues:

• poor integration of the security programme into business strategy — “security-as-a-silo” — which means the business isn’t investing the right amount in the right areas and cultivating the right attitudes and behaviours by end users
• sub-optimal use of people, skills and potential — wasting time chasing alerts rather than solving root causes, and failing to create a high-performing security culture
• low morale and burnout for the CISO themselves with CISOs typically moving on to a new role after just 18-26 months
• more frequent failure of controls, without detection, resulting in more and higher impact incidents
• Reduced ability to respond to crisis situations 

Positive Intelligence

Security leaders can put themselves in a better position to tackle these issues by improving their Positive Intelligence (PI). Your Positive Intelligence Quotient (PQ) measures your “mental fitness” or your ability to shift from negative thoughts to a positive attitude. Increasing your PQ can — along with a range of other benefits —help you create better interactions with others and become better at quickly identifying and solving new challenges. An analysis of more than two hundred different scientific studies, which collectively tested more than 275,000 people, suggests that managers and CEOs with a higher PQ are more likely to lead terms that are both happier and perform better than average. Today, over 1 million people globally have enhanced their careers and well-being through PI.

The impact of PQ on performance meant that, when we founded our company, Bright Cyber, we knew Positive Intelligence had a central role to play. Our aim at Bright Cyber is to provide CISOs with services and solutions that allow them to create sustainable and scalable cybersecurity operations that protect their organisations in the ways that matter. Helping CISOs to improve their own PQ would put them in a better position to tackle everything else that’s on their plate.

Working with Shirzad Chamine, a world leader in coaching and leadership, and his Positive Intelligence programme, with it’s tried-and-tested techniques for increasing PQ , we’ve created a course focused specifically on CISOs and other security leaders.

Positive Intelligence for Security Leaders

Delivered through a mobile app – in just 15 mins a day with weekly 1 hour coaching sessions for 6 weeks that are delivered by international leadership coach Chris Norton – Positive Intelligence for Security Leaders uses a combination of guided practice, inspiring and informative videos, and live leadership coaching sessions to increase your PQ. This will weaken the “Saboteurs” who generate all your “negativity” in the way you respond to challenges, while strengthening the “Sage” who helps you handle challenges in positive ways. Both during the course and afterwards, you’ll also benefit from peer-to-peer support from other participants.All of this will equip you to operate as a more effective leader and facilitator, and develop sustainable techniques to drive wellbeing, personal and team performance, and relationship improvements, across 4 strategic areas:

1. Developing the skill set to operate optimally at board level
   • Becoming an expert facilitator, so that cybersecurity acts as an enabler for business strategy and outcomes
   • Enabling risk-based decision making
   • Becoming more effective at influencing and negotiating
2. Enabling a high-performing security team
   • Moving to a people-centric approach, accepting the limits of technology
   • Attracting, developing and retaining cyber-security employees
   • Reducing time spent managing people and tasks
   • Moving to a proactive protection stance
3. Improving wellbeing and human cyber resilience
   • Enhancing access to clarity of purpose, peace of mind and wellbeing
   • Creating a team that can always operate effectively, including under cyber-adverse conditions
4. Embedding a positive cyber culture
   • Improving key relationships across all departments and employee levels to increase engagement, commitment and support
   • Receiving recognition for building a positive team and security culture, internally and externally

Course participants are happy to confirm the difference improving their PQ makes to how they operate. “I was surprised to see the overall impact of the scores and the changes in the saboteurs,” one of them told us. “Even when answering the questions, I could tell there was something different about my answers, and I could then see there was a tangible difference in all my actions.”

If you want to put yourself in a better position to tackle the challenges and stresses of your role as a CISO or security leader, then click here to receive our information on our course.