Security Leadership: Value People

4. Value people
Too often security executives fail in their leadership fail to forget that building relationships and trust with people are the secret to long term success.  Learn to build relationships based on trust with your subordinates, peers, and partners to enhance your leadership performance.

-- From (http://blog.csoboard.com/cso/2007/07/security-excell.html)

The number one reason why organizations relegate their business partners as "vendors or suppliers" is the fact most "business partners" fail to develop deep personal mutually trusting relationships with those organizations.  Business partners become more obsessed with "the next sales cycle" and forget about caring about their partner's business issues.

As a former CISO health care industry, I can remember working with some technology partners, who wasted the opportunity for building a long term mutually beneficial relationship with our health care organization.  These partners were more interested in earning sales commissions, often recommending solutions and services that did not address our most important business strategic issues.   Unfortunately for those partners, they were relegated to "vendor" status quickly.   "Vendors" who threw away their product brochures, listened to our needs, and genuinely cared about our work of healing people and helping the manage disease, they quickly became our business partners--they became our valued partners.

Early in my career path, I made the mistake of not valuing the talent, hard work, and contributions of subordinates, peers, and partners alike.   Since then, I've made a conscious effort to correct those mistakes.  Forget hierarchies and organizational charts.  Treat everyone the same, with respect, dignity, and value them for who they are.  Your life will be enriched beyond measure--as my life has been blessed.

Jaime