The technology landscape isn’t the only element evolving within the IT department, nor are rank-and-file staffers the only IT professionals expected to upskill.
CIOs, too, are expanding their executive capabilities — as they should be — given the everchanging list of challenges they face.
Those challenges have IT leaders sharpening existing skills and developing new ones as ways to improve their leadership style, while others are exploring new opportunities or expanding work responsibilities to grow their executive profiles.
“Enhancing your leadership skills is a lifelong process,” says Eric Bloom, executive director of the IT Management and Leadership Institute. “It’s not a destination or an event; it’s a continual process of learning and growing.”
As workers at all levels put together their development plans for 2025, IT leaders, recruiters, researchers, and advisers share what actions CIOs can take to advance their careers if they want to embrace a growth mindset.
1. Commit, plot for growth
CIOs who want to grow their leadership skills should first commit to making it happen — and then identify ways to move the needle. Growing new skills, like new muscle, requires engagement, repetition, and time.>
“Have that hunger and passion to learn new skills, and come up with strategies on how to execute that,” says Thomas Phelps IV, CIO of Laserfiche and an advisory board member for the SIM Research Institute.
Phelps credits (in part) his voracious reading for his personal and professional growth. He recommends Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. “That’s my all-time favorite book on leadership,” he adds.
[ See also: 26 essential book recommendations by and for IT leaders ]
2. Create an ‘ecosystem of allyship’
Andrew Duncan, CEO and managing partner of Infosys Consulting, says execs benefit from building an “allyship ecosystem” of “people in and outside your organization who can be your ally so you can bounce things off them.”
For example, allies can help an IT leader assess, “‘Have I hit the right value points?’ or ‘Am I articulating this well?’” Duncan says.
Allies differ slightly from coaches and mentors in that “they’re pulling you along to the right answer,” he adds “They’re people who understand the environment and the context in which you’re operating and look for the alternative points of view that you might not have considered as you put your idea forward. They offer situational awareness.”
3. Expand your peer network
On a related note, Skillsoft CIO Orla Daly plans to work on expanding her peer network to help her grow as a leader.
Daly joined a CIO network in late 2024 and is prioritizing involvement in the group with a goal to find a professional group “where you feel you’re getting out as much as you’re putting in, one that’s meaningful based on what you need, so I can formally and informally reach out to other CIOs to understand how they’re tackling something, what their experiences have been,” she says. “That can be hugely beneficial.”
4. Step up your work with professional organizations
Another way to grow as a leader, Bloom says, is to widen and deepen your involvement in professional organizations.
“The knowledge you’ll gain increases your capabilities as a thought leader,” he explains. “It also gives you external gravitas. If you’re the president of the local Society for Information Management chapter, for example, that establishes you as sort of an industry expert. It adds to your professional stature, and that in general adds to your executive presence, and people will want to listen to you.”
5. Be a better storyteller
The value of storytelling in business, particularly in sales and marketing, is well established, yet many executives have no training or skill in this space, says Caitlin McGaw, a career strategist and job search coach with Caitlin McGaw Coaching and herself a writer with the professional governance association ISACA.
Given its importance, she says CIOs need to make time to learn this communication technique.
CIOs, of course, have been focusing on their communication skills for years. But McGaw says storytelling can influence, inform, and inspire in ways that sharing information in a straightforward manner does not.
“When you encapsulate a message in a story, it shows the value of that message. Storytelling makes it memorable, versus facts or concepts that might go in one ear and out the other,” she explains. “Storytelling inspires bold change; it inspires teams to follow your vision and take the risks you need to take.”
McGaw suggests taking a class or using storytelling frameworks to help learn the craft. Start small, making sure the story includes key elements such as a challenge or conflict, a clear narrative and a resolution. Then practice. Work out stories with peers or mentors to test whether they inspire the desired responses or convey the intended messages.
“Stories can be personal or broader level,” McGaw adds, “but they have to service the purpose of crystalizing a message that you want your audience to hear.”
6. Be a more concise communicator
Like many IT execs, Gary Flowers also wants to improve his communication skills. More specifically, Flowers, CIO for transformation and technology services at nonprofit Year Up, wants to become a more concise communicator.
Inspired in part by the book Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less, Flowers says he aims to skillfully “take very complicated things and communicate them in a way that is brief.”
Think five or six PowerPoint slides that are “as equally powerful” as 50, he adds.
“We have a responsibility as leaders in the organization to make sure we can walk our fellow executives and counterparts through how technology will make a difference without losing them,” Flowers says.
He knows firsthand why this is an important skill. Three years ago he presented his three-year roadmap. He planned to fill the allotted two hours but realized 20 minutes into his presentation he had lost his audience. “They were either ready to fall asleep or weren’t interested or couldn’t follow what I was saying.”
He’s expecting a better response this year, as he plans to take only 30 minutes for the upcoming presentation of his new three-year roadmap.
7. Be a better public speaker
As the CIO role has become more strategic, CIOs have become more visible members of their executive teams. As such, they’re increasingly expected to present to the C-suite, board, organization, and other large groups.
So it’s best to be prepared to do so, Phelps says, knowing that’s not easy. “I’m an introvert by nature,” he says, “and introverts don’t like public speaking. But you have to do it as a leader, and embrace it, and do it exceptionally well.”
He honed his skills through Toastmasters International, a nonprofit organization for learning and practicing public speaking. He found it so helpful he started a Toastmasters group in Los Angeles and is now the group’s sponsor at his current employer.
Phelps has seen his practice pay off: He emceed the keynote event at a company event last year, speaking in front of 2,000 people, and he has spoken in front of audiences of up to 4,000 people.
8. Sharpen your people skills
AI is one of the most transformative technologies to come along in a long time. That makes some people excited, others fearful, and still others confused — particularly in relation to their jobs.
CIOs are instrumental in leading people through that change — and they must be better at it than they’ve been in the past, says Jason Pyle, president and managing director of Harvey Nash US and Canada, an IT recruitment and consultancy firm.
“It will come down to navigating all the human elements,” he says.
Pyle advises CIOs to grow their interpersonal skills, including their emotional intelligence, empathy, communication, and listening abilities.
These are characteristics that can be developed, but it takes effort and a willingness to work differently, Pyle explains, adding that CIOs can work with mentors and ask peers for honest assessments to pinpoint areas for improvement.
“Anytime you’re starting down a pathway of change, you have to talk to people you trust, let them know what you’re working on, and then set a measuring stick,” Pyle says. “It’s about taking steps to make adjustments and to self-assess and assess with others.”
9. Be real
Over the course of his career, Zach Rossmiller, CIO of the University of Montana, has worked for leaders “who weren’t authentic,” explaining that they came off phony when they expressed interest or concern.
“They just talk a big talk; they’re not actually getting the work done,” he says.
That’s not the leader he wants to be. So Rossmiller has been focusing on being authentic, transparent, and intentional.
“It’s hard because there are things I can share with my staff and other things I have to dance around, but I want my team to know when I speak with them, they know what I’m saying is true,” he says.
He also wants them to know he’s got their interests in mind, that “they’re not just a body in a seat. I want to grow people, invest in them, celebrate victories,” he says.
Rossmiller points to an annual review with one of his employees. During the review, the employee shared some struggles. Rossmiller in turn talked about some of his struggles and how he coped with them. He then pledged to make sure he’d get the resources the worker needed to succeed.
“It wasn’t about me saying, ‘Suck it up’; it’s more we’re in it together,” Rossmiller says.
In terms of being more intentional, Rossmiller is working to: change leadership styles to meet the needs of the moment; be more present; clearly communicate to his team and the university community what’s going on within IT; empower each individual worker; and actively listen to staffers so he can truly understand their points.
He says he’s also trying to slow down and solicit feedback as part of his leadership improvement efforts.
“I want to be known as someone who truly cares about my staff and fights the good fight and is in the trenches with them,” Rossmiller adds.
10. Strengthening ties to executive peers
One of the leadership objectives for Ankur Anand, CIO at Nash Squared, is to build up relationships with other executives by doing more to meet them on their level.
“We need to build more business partnerships, as this is no longer a role focused on technology. And CIOs have to build those relationships with stakeholders to be change leaders,” he says.
As part of his effort to strengthen rapport, Anand is spending time with the CFO to deepen his knowledge of financials — a step he says will help him be more fluent about the business value IT brings to each executive.
“The only way to gain the skill is to spend time with the CFO and the business,” he says.
11. Act like a CEO
Another way CIOs can boost their leadership skills is to act more like a CEO whose success is judged on meeting customer needs, says former CIO Diane Carco, now president of management consulting company Swingtide.
“One of the leadership skills that CIOs need to grow is learning to run their department as a business. They have to think like the CEO and focus on marketing to their customers, on product definitions, and growing their IT business instead of being a firefighter or order-taker,” she says. “To me, it means you’re the technology leader for the company. You’re not allowing [department heads] to displace your delivery of tech services because they outsourced it to someone else or brought in a SaaS solution because you’re hard to work with. You’re not the department of ‘no.’ Instead, you have customer relationship managers assigned to sit within each unit to understand their goals and needs so you can meet them, and you’re measuring delivery to ensure you’re fast.”
She says CIOs who don’t learn to act like a CEO risk being shut out of enterprise-level transformation work and risk being displaced by another executive.
12. Serve on a board
Pegasystems CIO David Vidoni wants to expand his leadership experience by becoming a member of a board of directors.
He’s working toward that goal: He currently serves on a board of a nonprofit and is actively seeking opportunities to serve on a board at a public company.
“It’s something new, and it’s an avenue for me to learn from others and to take those learnings and apply them to what I do daily,” he says.
Year Up’s Flowers is on a similar path for similar reasons. He is taking a board preparedness course offered by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), seeing board work as a way to contribute his knowledge to others but also as a way “to make me a better executive and leader for my own organization, to help me deliver as an IT executive what my board needs.”