Empathy: The Security Leader’s Invisible Superpower

When I train cops about operational empathy, I make the claim that empathy will save their lives more often than the gun on their hip. This is initially met with blank stares, because empathy is not a tangible tool or a defensive weapon. However, when we take the time to understand empathy and apply it to our work, it has a habit of turning into a superpower.

The same is true as corporate security leaders, whether we are talking about customer service at the uniformed security officer level, or if we are talking about influencing the decisions of the C suite.

Let’s define empathy. I like to keep it simple: “The ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes.” This means taking the time to look at an issue, an encounter, an experience, from someone else’s perspective. When we start to understand another person’s perspective and then adjust our approach to them, this is where the power of empathy can shine. So, what does this all mean in the context of security leadership?  We have an opportunity to extend our native skills and competencies. A superpower, in this context, is a human trait taken to a much higher level.

For the purposes of brevity, I will focus on perhaps the most important core activity that contributes to empathy and the creation of a superpower in leadership: Asking Questions.

Ask the Right Questions at the Right Time:

If empathy is the practice of placing ourselves in someone else’s shoes, the most practical way to start is by asking questions! To help explain this, I will start out with one of my empathy failures (I have plenty of those!)

When I managed security for the Washington DC Metro system, I managed a team of special police officers, stationed at rail yards, bus depots, and office buildings. I was also charged with beefing up physical security. In one location, I spearheaded the effort to enhance the perimeter fencing around a rail yard, to deter people from being able to cut or climb the fence. This meant a much tighter and stronger metal mesh on the chain link fencing. Installation day arrived and it was a beautiful fence. It went all the way around the perimeter, and right up to the guard house near the front entrance to the property, where all vehicles and pedestrians entered. I was proud of my accomplishment.

I went to the guard house and asked the officer what he thought of the fence, assuming he would be grateful towards me and shower the fence with compliments. Instead, he looked uncomfortable and said begrudgingly, “The fence looks great, but now I can’t see cars as they enter the property.” Oops. The fence I had installed, had such tight mesh, and was installed at such an angle that the officer literally had no visibility of the front entrance of the rail yard. I stepped inside and stood in the exact position of the officer, and sure enough, I couldn’t see the driveway. All I could see was that beautiful tightly knit fence mesh. In this case, when I was planning the project, I made two major failures. Number one, I did not take the time to evaluate the impact of my decision from the perspective of the end user, in this case, the officer in the guard house. Number two, I failed to ask the right questions at the right time, of the right person. Had I practiced these basic building blocks of empathy; I could have mitigated the issues during the planning stage. I never tried to place myself in the shoes of the right person. A few basic questions of this officer would have prevented my mini disaster. In a broader security leadership context, we can easily see the relevance beyond operational physical security.

Imagine when it is time to implement a new travel security policy, or access control policy. Perhaps you are announcing a handful of countries that you’ve deemed “no-go” zones that are too “high risk” for travel. It is easy to benchmark with other security professionals and lean on your own security expertise for such decisions. However, if we don’t take the time to ask the right questions and listen to our stakeholders about the impacts of our plans, we run the risk of never finding the true solution to the problem at hand. Or worse yet, like my fence mistake, our solution produces a new problem.  In the travel security example, what if one of your new “high risk” countries is the next emerging location for new market entry for your core business? Suddenly you are preventing your company’s executives from traveling to that exact country where they plan to do major business. How do you think that will be received?

When it comes time to make decisions that will have an impact on our stakeholders, it is crucial to activate our empathy muscle. Step inside the shoes of your stakeholders by asking them for feedback and seeking to understand how your actions will impact them. When you truly place yourself in their shoes, you will then be able to make a decision based on a holistic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve.

Burke Brownfeld is Director of Global Safety and Security for Visa Incorporated and is part of the 2020 faculty in The Great Conversation in Security in Palm Beach, Florida

The Future is Ours to Create

Two CSOs. Two perspectives. Both in a Great Conversation on May 21, 2019 at The Great Conversation in Security™

Their interest and their passion? The future of the ‘art of security’

Garrett Petraia, Levi Strauss and Tyson Aiken, Nike, started their conversation with a simple logic statement.

·Art often refers to the past: the value of what has been accomplished.

· State of the art implies more of an active present tense or emergent standard of conduct.

· Should we refer to the Future of Art as the process we use to revise or disrupt a standard based on a new way of thinking?

For example, we all practice “Risk Management”. But the term itself is limiting. It is only one side of a coin. The other side represents the opportunities that would arise if we had knowledge of the risks and leveraged them. This is an opportunistic mindset our industry must adapt to if they are going to become true business advisors and leaders.

And for business leaders, this strategic intelligence might move them from business enablement to business acceleration.

Tyson asked us: “How do we get to that place?”

And both speakers suggested we need to hire more business talent and train them in risk principles. “We need to move from hiring a resume that fits our current ‘state of the art’, to hiring based on intellect and values”, said Garrett. “I cannot allow my lack of perspective and knowledge to blind me to the risks or the opportunities. I must hire to support my blind spots.

But they acknowledged that it is easier to hire for security subject matter expertise then it is to find business talent that wants to join the security industry. The talent pipelines from the government, intelligent community, the military and the law enforcement community are crowded. So, our search for diversity will be more difficult. But it is desperately needed.

As Garrett said we need to understand why people fail. It usually comes down to the culture and the degree of collaboration they can foster with the community; the value intersection of their wants and needs with your own.

And both agreed, we need to learn how to gather, analyze, and leverage data that will allow business leaders to better comprehend their own risks and their opportunities by collaborating with our people and programs.

And it just might start with re-writing our own job descriptions to better represent the future of our art.

The Technology World is Evolving, Are You?

Steven Antoine, one of our Great Conversation faculty, had an article posted on Enterprise Security that is well worth the read. Written by Steven Antoine, Director, Global Assets Protection, Yum! Brands we have provided a starting point for the article and a link to read it here.

With the digitization of business, security often finds itself in the familiar, yet uncomfortable space of being reactionary; again. GTRM and the security of data typically are found in bifurcated skill sets, CISO vs. CSO. With the evolution and internet of things, everything is more connected. In the restaurant space, for example, predictive and prevention techniques are being refined as apps and gift, and credit cards are now the focus of the digital criminal enterprise. Camera and alarm vulnerabilities have to be (re)addressed as savvy hackers seek to become more criminally creative and less physically confrontational. The development of new tools such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence and the availability on consumer data make it such that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is being acted out in ways that five years ago couldn’t have been anticipated.

Read More

Leveraging the Differences: A Recipe for Innovation and Change

Last week we profiled the keynote that Greg Creed, the CEO of Yum! Brands provided to the executive community in The Great Conversation in Security. As you remember, he talked about the power of culture and the necessity to create a self-correcting culture focused on the vision, mission and goals of the organization. Engagement is key. If fosters trust.

Understanding what you are engaged to do is critical. The “Why” of your work. To Greg, that means you need to be RED. Relevant, Easy and Distinctive. To the degree he can create a culture that is continuously moving in that direction, he believes they can be successful. Every security executive was asking themselves, how they could bring RED into their program.

We were also privileged to listen to a cross functional industry panel discussing the strategic imperative of of diversity. We brought members of Greg’s team together that came from different backgrounds and departments to understand how they defined diversity, leveraged it, and are creating a force multiplier in value generation as a result.

The executives included the following:

James Fripp
Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer
Yum! Brands, Inc.

Erika Burkhardt
Vice President of Brand Protection
Pizza Hut LLC

Steven Antoine
Global Assets Protection Director
Yum! Brands, Inc.

We also included a medical doctor, Dr Robert Genzel, who had become the Chief Security Officer for Texas Motor Speedway, proving to all of us, that intelligent minds can absorb critical risk indicators and use their skills to create a strategy and a plan. Dr. Genzel is now providing services to the security community as CEO of Overwatch, a company dedicated to providing Medical, EMS, Fire and Security support services to Corporations, High Net-worth individuals and governmental agencies around the world. Through this experience he has become a sought-after speaker and consultant on Emergency Preparedness and Mass Casualty preparation and response for corporate campuses and large spectator venues. That would not have happened without a recognition that another perspective could be a game-changer.

The discussion was poignant. We walked away with a number of nuggets of wisdom that we believe can add to our leadership and our value.

1. Diversity is the foundation of ideation and innovation. By intentionally identifying, including and listening to people from different experiences, cultural backgrounds, and racial or gender identities, we have the opportunity to expand our imagination and sharpen our ideas.

2. Diversity demands empathy and care. If fostered, it strengthens the ties that bind us to one another.

3. Diversity opens our eyes. It is the enemy of scotomas; the dysfunctional blindness of ignorance.

4. Diversity leverages the differences in us. It does not fight them or critique them. It seeks to understand them.

So, as we left the conversation, each of us were thinking who is on my team and, more importantly, who is not. And what can I do about it?