I remember reading and seeing this, an old blurry image taken at a conference from what looks like 1996. The words stuck with me for some time, “only 15% technical knowledge”? I have heaps of technical knowledge? This can’t be true? I later convinced myself this metric was nothing more than a marketing ploy likely designed to sell something, I completely dismissed and forgot it.
And then I saw it again, some years later, reading it again “85% of your financial success is due to your personality and ability to communicate…”
Who exactly are the ‘Carnegie Institute’ what do they do? Where do they do it? Where did this metric come from? What are they good at? After some weeks of searching, reading, watching, listening, and testing, I was the biggest self-improvement advocate within a 100-mile radius, this was the starting point for me, five years later I’m writing this post to help you.
If you want to be great at Cyber security, you must blend you’re learning material and one skill you must not ignore is the ability to communicate, negotiate and influence. Only a very lucky few are born with these skills, and I speak from experience, these soft skills, they CAN learned and put to use immediately.
There has never been a better time to be in a position to be able to unpack the technical nuances of something as complex as cyber security, leveraging soft skills and combining them with technicals skills not only catapults your career and earning ability, it’ll touch and improve almost every aspect of your life — and I get it, this might be coming across a little far fetched, if you’re anything like me, it might be at this point you’re skeptical and want to stop reading, before you do that, think about the following concept.
The outside world views Cyber Security as an enigma, cloaked in strange concepts, terms, analogies, and buzzwords a handful of people understand. If you’re able to decipher the technical jargon so that others outside of this field can effectively make decisions, you instantly become more valuable. I talk more about this concept in the following video, let me know what you think?
