EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Only 30% of US employees are genuinely engaged in their work, with consequences playing out in the economy. Disengaged employees and productivity loss costs roughly $550 billion per year.

To raise productivity, and insure corporate growth, leaders must rise as beacons of talent, insight and expertise. While many leaders strive for this, research suggests that 30%-60% of leaders use ineffective tactics that ultimately ruin their reputations and leave employees floundering.

As a CISO, serving as an effective, empowering leader demands a unique blend of charisma, character, skills and education. These seven leadership insights are sure to add value to what you can offer your team.

1. Achieve extraordinary results by creating a climate of trust. When people trust you, they will gladly and enthusiastically comply with your requests. To acquire trust, begin with the ‘why’. Explain how the project fits into the larger picture, and connects with the company’s vision.
2. Lead with warmth, confidence and an open mind. Leaders who try to drive performance through tight marshaling of ideas, chest-thumping bravado, or by penalizing employees for decisions or ideas will neither encourage productivity nor drive maximal business growth.
3. Sharpen your business acumen. Think of it as a means of becoming more agile. The more that you participate in making business decisions, the more effectively you will be able to communicate ideas to your team, and lead with confidence.
4. Take carefully calculated risks. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear,” as George Addair once said. Maintaining the status quo does not move the needle.
5. Avoid getting lost in your inbox. In what is an aggressive, yet insightful stance on the issue, global executive coach Brendon Burchard tweets, “Beware of your inbox, it’s nothing but a convenient organizing system for other people’s agendas”. Segment your day to include blocks of time reserved for the productivity that will take your career, and the careers of those around you, to the next level.
6. Manage your meetings. Trim down the number of meetings on your calendar. This will free up your time for true productivity.
7. Understand what you are responsible for. A Poneman Institute report notes that 45% of CISOs do not have clearly defined responsibilities. A “CISO who understands the breadth of technology used and desired by the organization, complies with the regulations via control frameworks, assesses information asset risk, expands security beyond the organization (such as cloud, mobile, social media, threat intelligence networking), and knows how the privacy regulations affect the organization (where the data is, how it is being used, and how it is being protected)…” is ready to embark on the path to professional success and to lay the groundwork for the success of their team.

For more business insights surrounding CISO success, visit Forbes.