It's great for a CIO to have a good idea, but if it stops there, then it's not going to do anyone any good. CIOs need to be able to communicate their thoughts with the rest of their department and the company in order to maintain credibility as a thought-leader. How each of us communicates is a personal choice. We have many ways of doing this from tough talking to conversations. The most important point is that we share our information with others.

What you'll find inside:

• A CIO always has to maintain credibility
• When cyberattacked, should CIOs share information about the experience?
• How CIOs can teach their employees about cybersecurity
• CIOS need to learn how best to use email

What to communicate is a critical question that every CIO is going to have to answer for themselves. When the company suffers a digital attack, what needs to be communicated, to whom, and how? When we need to connect with members of our team, is going for a walk with them the right method to get our point across?

Effective communication is a set of skills that every CIO needs to develop. Our goal has to be to make any communication that we do be effective - we want to come across as being persuasive. We need to be able to get our information across when we are talking about critical issues like cybersecurity.

CIOs communicate in a variety of different ways. We have opportunities to share both good news and bad news. We need to know how to do both well. Email is one of the most commonly used communication tools by CIOs. However, we don't always use it well. We need to take the time to make sure that our emails will be opened and that they will cause people to take action.

For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com.