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The Importance of a High Performance Cybersecurity Team

In this six-part series I am going to address five pillars for creating a high performance security team. we are starting at a high level in this article and then each week I will go into more detail on another pillar.

Because cybersecurity professionals face a lot of adversity and burnout it is incredibly important for their leadership to understand what it takes to create a high performance security team.

If you are the type of leader who is striving to make big things happen for your organization, protect your organization’s data, and possibly create a competitive advantage through security, a high performance security team is the answer. If you are reading this and you don’t have a security team at all, then forming one or bringing in security consultants is the place to start. As you build that team you can incorporate the lessons from this series in order to build a high performance team from the ground up.

High performance teams in general get more done with less effort and with better results. They have less drama and more creative ideas. A High performance security team is one of the cornerstones of your competitive advantage because when you have rock star security talent that isn’t going to leave, you have something your competition probably does not, which puts you in a leading position.

You are probably intimately familiar with teams that are not high performing from your own experiences throughout your career and so am I, that is why I wrote The Corporate Detox. Therefore let’s dive right into the signs of a high performance team because so you can start focusing on what you want vs. focusing on what you don’t want.

The signs you have a high performance team:

  • Team members genuinely like spending time together and trust each other
  • Everyone is working towards a shared goal and vision
  • Projects are completed on time and on (or under) budget
  • Assigned roles are based on individuals strengths and interests
  • Team members communicate with each other and with you (their leader)
  • Everyone talks about what is working and what isn’t working
  • During brainstorming sessions no idea is ridiculed
  • Everyone is encouraged to participate in discussions
  • Feedback is provided in real time and in a constructive way
  • There is no finger pointing or blame when things don’t go as planned
  • Roles and accountability are openly discussed
  • No one is “just hanging in there” and counting down the days until Friday

If your security team is missing some of these signs, it’s okay, you can turn it around, and I’m going to provide you a roadmap to do this. In this series, each article will discuss one of the five pillars of not just high-performance teams, but EPICC high performance teams:

EPICC Teams are Engaged, Productive, Have Integrity, Collaborate and Communicate.

Now between reading this and next week’s article, I encourage you to conduct a review of your current security team. How many of the signs that I described in the above checklist can you say your team embodies? How many need a little work? How many are non-existent? Don’t pad your answers; be honest because this will help you focus on what you want. When you see areas that you are not happy with you will better know what changes you need to make.

Sometimes it’s easier to identify what you don’t want in order to more clearly identify and define what you do want. In looking ahead to next week’s article in which we will discuss the first pillar, Engagement, start to think about the times you have been most engaged and the times you have been least engaged at work.

In the meantime you can always reach out to me at sharon@c-suiteresults.com to discuss this topic, security teams, or security strategy. If you enjoy podcasts you can listen to C-Suite Results Radio to tap into the wisdom of other successful business people who know the path you’re traveling.

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

Expert Advice on How to Negotiate With a Bully

 

“To be fearless against a bully display what he fears.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

 

“Expert Advice On How To Negotiate With A Bully”

Follow this expert advice to negotiate with a bully.

  1. Differentiate between a bully that may be controlling versus bullying. Some people don’t see themselves as bullies. They may be the type that likes to be in control of situations and display overly aggressive means to maintain that control. The two perspectives possess different mindsets.
  2. Identify the personality type of the bully you’re negotiating with (you’re always negotiating). Thus, even in your first encounter with a person (and after that time), you should assess that person’s traits, demeanor, and characteristics. Doing so will give you the insight needed to formulate a negotiation strategy.
  3. Determine the best environment to negotiate with a bully. He may be stronger in one environment as the result of resources surrounding him or those he has to ‘save face’ for; this may also tend to make him cockier than he’d normally be. If that’s the case, get him out of his environment; this should be done physically and/or psychologically. In doing so you’ll dilute his psychological powers and weaken him mentally in the process (i.e. power is perceptional).
  4. If addressing a bully on a one-on-one basis doesn’t achieve your objective(s), marshal forces to use as leverage against him. Depending on the situation, let those that he has more respect for take the lead on your behalf; never let a bully know how strong your forces are. You must be prepared to send in a second, third, fourth, etc., wave that’s stronger than what preceded it. For maximum effect, the timing of your next foray should occur just when the bully thinks he’s squashed your best efforts. In normal situations, over time you’ll wear the bully down and he’ll acquiesce to your wishes. Be mindful of the bully that won’t acquiesce over a period of exhaustive negotiations when forces have been marshaled against him. You might be dealing with a bully that’s willing to destroy himself for the sake of denying you any kind of victory. To prevent from making too many concessions, establish exit points that indicate when you should depart the negotiation. Always be mindful that, the longer you stay engaged in a negotiation, the likelier you are to make concessions to your disadvantage. This is due to the psychological need to see the negotiation to its end. This could be to your severe detriment.
  5. Once you’ve achieved your objective(s), over a period of time reengage the bully from a polite perspective and observe how he interacts with you. To the degree the relationship is important to you, be prepared to let him win an encounter, but never let him bully you again. Your prior actions should be engrained in his mind to the point that he’d not want to experience the prior encounter that you two engaged in.
  6. As further insight into the affects your engagement has had with a bully, note how those closes to the bully engage with you after an encounter. Their actions will allow you to assess the degree of sting that still resides in the bully.

Bullies only pick on those that they perceive to be weaker than themselves. Don’t let a bully perceive weakness in you and he’ll have no target to attack … and everything will be right with the world.

What are your takeaways? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #HowToNegotiateWithBully #PreventBullying

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Accountability – I Want to Count on You!

Accountability is defined as an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions. Without it, you would live and work in a world without confidence. It would be almost impossible to plan a day if you had no reasonable confidence that, at the very least, people would show up and complete their tasks. Envision a workplace where no one did what they said they would do. A place where no one felt responsible for themselves or their team. Is that where you want to work?

If you want people around you to be accountable, then you must do what you say, too. You don’t live in a vacuum; you work with a team. Following through on your own obligations creates a better work environment for all the stakeholders.  Take 10% of the time that you worry about others doing their job and concentrate on yourself. Take being judgmental attitudes and take a good look at your own behavior.  How are you contributing to a more successful workplace? If you say you will get it done, do you?  If not, do you take responsibility or find blame?  Replace blame with understanding how you may have created a situation that went awry. Make sure you are setting an example that you want to be followed.

What do you need to do to ensure that your culture breeds accountability and removes the fear of admitting when errors are made?

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do for which we are accountable.”

—John Baptiste Moliere

Excerpt from Blueprint for Employee Engagement – 37 Essential Elements to Influence, Innovate & Inspire. (Coming December 2017)

Julie Ann Sullivan’s focus is on employee engagement and creating workplace cultures where people want to come to work.  Julie Ann works with companies to develop people who are engaged, productive and appreciated. She hosts the Mere Mortals Unite and Businesses that Care podcasts on C-Suite Radio .  For more information go to http://julieannsullivan.com/

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Leadership Skills

Need to Make Connections? Get on the Phone!

The key to breaking the ice with someone new is meeting them face-to-face. You can immediately judge the impact of your words by their facial expressions. Their face has 43 muscles that are able to produce more than twenty expressions. Some of these are negative. If you see a negative one, you know right away how to direct the conversation. But you can’t see those facial expressions through email. If someone doesn’t like what you have to say in an email, you’ll never know until they’ve already digested and reacted to it. And, even then, you still may not know for sure.

When you meet them face-to-face, they know that you are giving them your undivided attention. You now have the chance to demonstrate who you are. This can be the beginning of a fruitful long-term business relationship.

If you can’t meet face-to-face, choose video conferencing. For at least the first meeting and any important conversations thereafter, you will notice physical feedback better through a video conference. Then, both of you will be on the same page.

The next best choice is the telephone. But why not email? You can’t hear the other person’s intonation through email. There are no moments of silence through email. The intonation in someone’s voice can say a lot—are they interested? Pleased? Confused? On the phone, you have countless chances to win someone over just by adjusting to their intonation.

Jeff Stevenson, our client at VinoPRO, says a phone number is worth more than 100 times as much as an email address. According to him, he’s in “the relationship-selling business”. He has the top telephone sales company in the wine industry, and he’s done this by mastering “an ancient form of communication: the telephone!”

More and more companies today prefer email marketing. The first challenge is to get people to open your email. Then, they have to want to read it. And finally, they have to make the decision to invest in your product. Sure, you can reach tens of thousands of people at once, but there may be only 50 buyers. Most email recipients see these types of emails as intrusive and impersonal, so why would they buy?

Jeff uses the “ancient form of communication” to his advantage. He made the Inc. 500 list (with three years running) and is currently developing his third call center. Why? People want to talk to a real person, especially when it comes to luxury items like wine. People want a real relationship. They want to talk to someone who has their best interests at heart. What makes real-time conversation so effective is personalized attention—it just isn’t possible through email!

Being in business through the “ancient” age of fax machines, snail mail, and the telephone has taught us that those technologies work! This isn’t to say we’ve abandoned email or text-based communication, but there is a time and place for them. Our experience with face-to-face interaction has shown us when we must be more personal. For example, when it comes to settling a mix-up, email is completely unreliable. For us, the place for email is recording correspondence, conversation history, and keeping track of documents. Again, it has its place. But you can’t un-send an email!

As convenient as email may be, sometimes you really have to just pick up the phone!

For more, read on: http://csnetworkadvis.staging.wpengine.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

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Cybersecurity Resources That Your Organization Must Have

This article is part of a series where we are discussing your role as an organizational leader in the cyberwar that has been all over the news on regular basis lately. I started with a frank discussion on whose side you might actually be on when you don’t protect your organization’s network. In the second article we discussed creating a culture of security and the third article was all about strategy. This is the fourth and final article in this series and we are discussing resources for your security team and organization.

In order for your security team to be on the front line of this cyberwar, defending your network and your data, they need to have the best resources available in order to defend against the many threat actors attacking organizations like yours every day.

One of the biggest challenges in this war we defend against in cyberspace is that it is always changing. The adversaries continue to get better and change their strategies, and if we don’t arm our people with knowledge and skills we will continue to be on the losing side. Depending on your industry that could result in a loss of data, intellectual property, or national security secrets, and could literally be a question of life or death for those in the healthcare industry.

New technologies emerge at lightening speed, which provide hackers new ways to launch their cyber attacks that we need to keep up with. Every time a new application is deployed, a new line of code is written, or a new Internet of Things (IoT) device is connected to the network, we invite the bad guy in. Not because we are asking to be attacked, but because they know how to use our technologies against us for their gain.

Let’s look at the three categories of resources and the key factors they address to win this never ending cyberfight waged against us on a daily basis.

People

Have you created your cyber team with the best offensive and defensive players? Like sports and traditional war, you have to have the best players or soldiers to win in a cyberwar. Not only does that mean that you have the right people in the right roles; it also means you have trained them and continue to train them. This applies to your internal employees and any third parties that work on-site or off-site to help secure your organization’s cyberspace and data.

Security personnel are in a constant state of adversity, trying to keep up with new technologies and threat actors. They almost never hear “job well done.” Often your security team is only recognized when something goes wrong, but not  for the success of stopping a breach, which is their job every day. Other employees are recognized for a job well done, for doing their job well, but the security team is often overlooked since their success is typically invisible.

People want to be recognized for what they do and often the security professional goes without such recognition most of their career. You want to help your team avoid burnout and apathy, this is going to be one of the key ways you can do that.

Time

Time is most definitely a resource and if you have ever said “I don’t have time for that” you know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen it myself, too many times, good people leave due to overwhelm and exhaustion.

This is a team of highly specialized people where you can’t afford high turnover. Not only because turnover is expensive in and of itself, but because these individuals have such specific knowledge that when they leave the time it takes a new employee to catch up is dangerous. In the time spent ramping up, they can easily miss what their predecessor would have seen. While you can’t avoid all turnover, it will happen, you can reduce the amount of turnover by understanding how much your team can actually do and providing additional resources like contractors, third parties, and tools where needed.

Whether you hire more staff or outsource, you must remember that time is a resource that cannot be changed and security is a role that cannot be given to just anyone or ignored due to budget constraints.

Tools

Every good mechanic needs a set of tools and the same is true for your security team. The problem often becomes which tools to use within your security team since there are so many and the tools can be very noisy. Noisy being all the alerts they can generate if not configured (or tuned) properly.

The best way to ensure you are getting the right tools for your team is to include your frontline defenders in the vetting process for new tools. Who knows better what you need, the person doing the work day in and day out or their manager or the executive team? You want what’s best for your security team so ensure the users are part of the decision making process.

It is often good to include a vendor-neutral security consultant who can ask questions of the vendor that you and your team may not have thought about and do it with complete objectivity.

  • What is the tool truly capable of?
  • Does your team already have a tool that can do something similar they are not fully utilizing?
  • Does the new tool integrate with the current infrastructure?
  • What alerts will it generate?
  • How hard is it to configure?
  • And often missed but extremely important, will you need a support contract or consulting contract from the vendor just to make it work?

With the right team doing the amount of work that makes sense with the right tools, you are setting your organization up for success in the fight against cyber attacks. If you have not given this issue much thought or deep thought before, that’s okay;, you’re not alone in that. It’s time to get started and the sooner the better because as we continue to see there are more and more breaches, attacks, and threat actors in cyberspace than ever before. As we continue to put more in the cloud, connect more devices, and have a larger remote workforce, this becomes more and more part of your everyday operational concern just like keeping the lights on and the water running.

If you want to discuss any of these resource concerns with a vendor-neutral consultant email sharon@c-suiteresults.com to start discussing the resource questions you have now. Sharon provides virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) and advisory services, consults with clients on security strategies, writes policies, and helps organizations of all sizes become and maintain security and compliance.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

3 Bad Speaking Habits You Don’t Know You Have

If you’re like most people, even if you consider yourself to be a “pretty good” speaker, you know you could always be better. The irony is that, while that’s generally true, you probably don’t realize the actual problems you need to fix.

So let’s turn the microscope to three of the most common pitfalls to effective speaking.

  1. Fillers

We’re all familiar with the sins of the repeated “um,” “uh,” and “like,” “you know” and “I mean,” but fillers get much more sophisticated and subtle.

Words like “actually” and “really” can transform into what I call educated fillers. They seem to fit into the conversation, but repeatedly sneak into speech in places where they have no inherent value. They just chop up the sentence, making it harder for the listener to cognitively process the underlying message.

But where most of us get tripped up is the variety of fillers used. If you alternate between them as you speak, they’re less likely to be noticed… but still detract from the fluidity of the point you’re trying to make.

  1. The Vocal Cliff

The “vocal cliff” is what I call the habit of trailing off at the ends of your sentences. This happens for a variety of reasons. First, we tend to speak in a stream of consciousness, which is full of commas rather than periods. As you’re running along, you run out of air but don’t know where or how to refuel, so your voice creaks its way to a slow, grinding halt, much like if your car ran out of gas in the middle of the road.

Another cause of falling off the vocal cliff is when you’re halfway done with your point but your brain is jumping ahead, cueing up the next point you want to make so you don’t forget it, while your mouth struggles to catch up. Your lack of attention to what you’re currently saying comes through as your voice falls off the cliff. Stay present.

Or maybe you trail off because you lose confidence in what you’re saying after reading some displeased faces in the audience. This causes you to hold back, and you fall off the cliff, which projects your self-doubt.

  1. Negative Facial Expressions

As you listen to people, chances are, you don’t even know what kind of facial expressions you make, but more often than not they can convey negative thoughts. Maybe you’re just thinking about what the person is saying, but your “thinking face” has furrowed eyebrows and an ever-so-slight frown. This leads to two problems.

First, people will infer anger or disagreement, regardless of how you genuinely feel. Second, when you do speak, those down-angled facial features actually flatten your pitch and tone, making you also sound displeased. Even if that’s how you feel, do you really want to telegraph it so transparently? And if that does not accurately reflect your feelings, then you’re sending mixed messages and sabotaging your own credibility.

To avoid any of these pitfalls, awareness is the first and most important step. Don’t assume you know which habits you do or don’t have. Try video recording yourself talking on the phone. When you watch it afterwards, do you hear fillers creeping in, or does your voice fall off “the cliff”? Do you appear anxious or irritated? You’ll be amazed at what you discover, and what adjusting such small behaviors can do for your overall executive presence and leadership image.

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Do you have questions or comments about your bad habits or how to avoid them? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss them with me personally!

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You Always Have Control

“Change is ever occurring. Thus, you can embrace change and control it, or you will be controlled by change. The choice is yours but if you don’t make a choice, change will make the choice for you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

No matter what occurs in your life, you always have control. That’s true because you have the power and ability to change anything that doesn’t suit you. That change may be limited and limiting, but there’s a degree that you can influence change, you just have to seek what it is and what it means to change.

So, when you don’t like the outcome of a situation, seek to change it or the way you view it (i.e. change your mind per the meaning it has). Once you realize that you don’t have to be held captive by the outcome that change thrust upon you, you’ll feel better about how you can control the change that has occurred. That will allow you to see the perception of negative change from a more positive perspective … and everything will be right with the world.

 

 

 

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development

7 Ways Entrepreneurship Can Be Incorporated into Your Company Culture

Company culture is the foundation of relevancy for your business. A positive company culture fosters creativity, outside-the-box thinking, and imagination. Changing your company culture is not easy, but the benefits speak for themselves.

While building Barefoot Wine into a bestselling brand, we relied on seven steps to build a positive company culture:

  1. Remove Roadblocks: Structure can be limiting. If an employee’s great idea has to pass through more than one pair of hands, they can become discouraged and may even lose recognition for their work. At Barefoot, employees were able to present their ideas directly to management, avoiding unnecessary compliance processes.
  2. Acknowledge: When creative, thorough, and efficient work is recognized publicly, all of your employees are more likely to respect others as team players. On every employee’s work anniversary with Barefoot, we sent out a memo that outlined their accomplishments during their last year. Recognizing employees’ efforts sends a message that good work does not go unnoticed.
  3. Have Fun: Vendors, employees, and consumers alike all want to do business with fun people. Going along with the Barefoot brand, Michael was “Head Stomper” and CEO; Bonnie’s title was “Original Foot” since her foot was on the label. Doug McCorkle was our Controller and “The Cork”—because who else but our Controller would put a stop to it? A fun environment allows creativity to flourish.
  4. Make Mistakes Write: Don’t just make your mistakes right—make them write! Mistakes happen. Establish a culture that embraces this, as long as all of the blunders are identified. Allow any mistake to be an opportunity to put processes in place that will prevent it from happening again. Identify which documents need to be updated for the future, whether that’s a checklist, a new procedure, or a new policy. Establish a culture of permission—a culture that says, “Be creative and make mistakes as long as you hold yourself accountable.”
  5. Have a Two-Division Company: What set Barefoot apart was having two divisions, compared to a vertical structure with the CEO at the top and numerous departments on the bottom. We had Sales and Sales Support. That’s it! Product development, marketing, accounting, and the CEO were all part of the Sales Support division. If your company is all about the consumer experience, sales should be on top with everyone else supporting sales. Think of where your company would be without sales—it wouldn’t be!
  6. Pay for Performance: Paying your employees right will not only keep them there—it will keep them motivated. We established our pay structure with teamwork in mind. Since our employees’ bonuses and employer’s contribution to their 401k were partially reliant on performance, they were determined to excel, and to encourage their teammates to do the same.
  7. The Money Map: Set the precedent for your employees right when they start. We distributed an infographic that showed exactly how the money traveled from the consumer’s pockets into their In that moment, the sales process became transparent to the employee, and the stage was set for a positive sales culture.

Making changes to company culture starts at the top and radiates through the rest of the company. So, take a look at your management’s attitude toward everything from pay, to making mistakes, to having fun, and you will soon see where the changes are necessary.

For more, read on: http://csnetworkadvis.staging.wpengine.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are – 4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Click here to watch You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are – 4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Have you ever given thought as to how your communication may be sabotaging your influence without you even knowing it?

Most leaders haven’t given thought to this question, much less taken the steps to increase their awareness of how their listeners hear and see them rather than what they believe to be true.  That is why self-awareness is the first step to greater influence Monday to Monday®.

To enhance your influence, you need to evaluate your communication based on facts, not feelings. You need to get to the heart of what is really going on by experiencing your communication through the eyes and ears of your listeners and readers.

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Best Practices Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development Women In Business

Listening – A New Approach to Quality Communication

Listening – A New Approach to Quality Communication

In our corporate worlds, there just isn’t enough listening going on.  This has been made abundantly clear with the vast amount of sexual harassment accusations we are hearing.  One aspect that is leading this cry for honesty and transparency is that the victims finally feel like they are being heard.   Unfortunately, they needed the masses to feel that way.

Scandal is not necessary for you to learn this essential skill of listening.  Don’t you dare call it a soft skill.  If you want your company to grow from the inside out, for every stakeholder, then clearly comprehend why you have two ears and one mouth.  Specifically, listening can afford you valuable information from recruiting to exit, from design to sale, from start up to IPO.

When you are recruiting, assuming you are looking for a workforce that plays well with others and wants to grow with you, listen.  Ask questions that will open a dialogue to expose what that person would do when circumstances aren’t perfect.  Ask and then listen.  Don’t negate or manipulate what they are saying.   Be still, stop thinking about what you want to say and listen.  Ask what they want to be doing in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years.  Under the right conditions, can you give them the pathway to meet those goals?

When someone leaves, find out why.  You may be surprised.  They may have changed priorities, goals or skills.  Simply, they may not be a good fit for your particular organization anymore.  You might be able to help them find a better suited position and keep what might become a loyal customer in the future, because you listened.

Just as you listen to your public, your customers and clients, for feedback on your newest services and products, do the same for the people that carry out your business goals.  In the C-Suite you don’t know what it is like to be in the trenches every day.  Just because you come up with a great idea it doesn’t mean it will work.  You have to include those that will be utilizing that idea in design, preparation and modifications.

Listening.  It’s the new primary skill that has found its celebrity in time to be taught, nurtured and practiced.  See if you can just listen in your next conversation.

Julie Ann Sullivan’s focus is on employee engagement and creating workplace cultures where people want to come to work.  Julie Ann works with companies to develop people who are engaged, productive and appreciated. She hosts the Mere Mortals Unite and Businesses that Care podcasts on C-Suite Radio . For more information go to http://julieannsullivan.com/

Copyright ©2017 Julie Ann Sullivan – Used with Permission