Cultivating Leadership in the IT World

by David R. Caruso and Kerry F. Gentry

In this, the third and final Executive Update in our series on leadership (see Part I, Vol. 8, No. 10; and Part II, Vol. 8, No. 15), we mine the data from a recent Cutter Consortium survey to discover what differences, if any, exist for leadership skills and practices across industries, roles, and geographical areas. Our Executive Report " Cultivating Effective Leadership in the IT World" (Vol. 8, No. 1) outlined a model of leadership and applied it to the IT world. This simple model, the Leadership Wheel, pictures leadership as a wheel, with essential traits at the hub of the wheel, important behaviors at the spoke level, and a set of specific skills at the outer edge or rim. All are necessary for effective leadership, but hub traits are difficult to train, whereas rim skills are easier to acquire.