Navigating the Cybersecurity Career Path

CHAPTER 19How Do I Encourage Diversity?

Summary

• Know yourself: Know what you want to focus on and set metrics to measure your progress.
• Network: Get to know diversity networking groups. Learn from them and partner with them to improve your workplace and your job postings.
• Stay curious: Listen to all your employees to ensure they feel included, respected, and supported. Find regular ways to solicit feedback from your entire team.
• Communicate well and often: Let everyone know this is an issue you care about and share what you learn.
• Know talent: Truly learn how to spot, assess, and develop talent. Then trust this skill when you observe or experience the exceptional, especially when they don't talk, look, or act as you expect.
• Mentor: You will find your “diamonds in the rough” in places where you won't expect. They will be unpolished, diverse or not. Learn how to help your team unlock the best of themselves and believe in themselves — especially diverse talent!

Building the community you want and need is one of the fun parts of being a security leader. However, questions of diversity might not come up when you first start out. Instead, managers reach a point in their careers (and in their maturity as managers) when they start to pay attention to equity issues. This mostly occurs when someone has been a manager for a while and has largely mastered basic management skills.

When this happens, a leader must start with what they have. The manager leads a small team with ...