Thought leaders aren't leaders

For the last few weeks I've seen news stories and much lamenting on twitter about the security skills shortage. Some say there is no shortage, some say it's horrible beyond belief. Basically there's someone arguing every possible side of this. I'm not going to debate if there is or isn't a worker shortage, that's not really the point. A lot of complaining was done by people who would call themselves leaders in the security universe. I then read the below article and change my thinking up a bit.

Loyal employees are worth MUCH MORE than their weight in gold

Our problem isn't a staff shortage. Our problem is we don't have any actual leaders. I mean people who aren't just "in charge". Real leaders aren't just in charge, they help their people grow in a way that accomplishes their vision. Virtually everyone in the security space has spent their entire careers working alone to learn new things. We are not an industry known for working together and the thing I'd never really thought about before was that if we never work together, we never really care about anyone or anything (except ourselves). The security people who are in charge of other security people aren't motivating anyone which by definition means they're not accomplishing any sort of vision. This holds true for most organizations since barely keeping the train on the track is pretty much the best case scenario.

If I was going to guess the existing HR people look at most security groups and see the same dumpster fire we see when we look at IoT.

In the industry today virtually everyone who is seen as being some sort of security leader is what a marketing person would call "thought leaders". Thought leaders aren't leaders. Some do have talent. Some had talent. And some just own a really nice suit. It doesn't matter though. What we end up with is a situation where the only thing anyone worries about is how many Twitter followers they have instead of making a real difference. You make a real difference when you coach and motivate someone else do great things.

Being a leader with loyal employees would be a monumental step for most organizations. We have no idea who to hire and how to teach them because the leaders don't know how to do those things. Those are skills real leaders have and real leaders develop in their people. I suspect the HR department knows what's wrong with the security groups. They also know we won't listen to them.

There is a security talent shortage, but it's a shortage of leadership talent.