Getting What You Want

Dateline: LaGuardia Airport, Queens, New York City

It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. My wife and I had enjoyed a fun holiday with our daughters in Manhattan, and we now had to join the throng of travelers returning to their homes and labors.

My wife and I were headed for separate aircraft, since we would be parting ways for a week of business travel. Fortunately, our scheduled departures were only a few minutes apart, and our gates were on the same concourse. We were enjoying an hour of people watching as we waited for our flights to board.

When my wife had checked in at the counter for this leg of her journey, the clerk said she would be unable to assign her a seat. My wife asked why, since she was a status flyer. The woman seemed harassed and curtly told her she would be assigned a seat at the gate.

Now, as we watched a women’s college soccer team and their entourage taking up numerous seats in the gate lounge, my wife became anxious to ensure that a seat would indeed be available for her. She noticed a gate attendant approaching the podium and stood up, intent on beating the “overbooked” message that would inevitably come over the loudspeaker. I looked over at the podium, touched her arm, and shook my head.

In that second of delay, a dozen other people jumped up to stand in the newly formed line before the gate agent. My wife pointed at the lengthening queue and gave me a hard look. I asked her to sit down and watch what was happening.

The airline employee had arrived with a scowl on her face and a hard edge to her voice. She also appeared to be having problems with the computer. One by one, the people who approached her with their petitions were being sent back to wait for their still unassigned seats.

I pointed out another airline employee approaching the desk from a different direction. This woman had a handful of ticket receipts and was cheerfully responding to questions from another boarding agent. My wife got her attention and was promptly and courteously given a prime aisle seat in the front of the plane. She returned pleasantly surprised.

“How did you know to wait for the other agent?” she asked.

“I honestly didn’t know there would be another agent, but I could tell by that first agent’s body language that you weren’t going to get what you needed from her,” I said. “I figured that if a second agent did show up, you would have a better than 50 percent chance of getting someone more open and able to help you.”
“Since when can you read body language?” she asked with a laugh.

“I’m not always spot on, but hers was unmistakable,” I replied.

I’d actually had some practice reading nonverbal cues just the previous week. I had gone to a clothing store to return a pair of shoes that I’d bought with a one-day-only 15%-off coupon. After trading in the ill-fitting shoes, I noticed a gentleman’s top coat on sale that fit perfectly. I took my used coupon to the checkout to see if they would honor it for a second day, since I’d had to return my first purchase.

The first checkout clerk I spotted was having a rough time with her cash register. As I stood in line, I watched her pained facial expressions and the obvious exasperation she was having with the machine. I decided to step out of line and look for someone having a better day. After a quick scan, I saw a cheerful young woman smiling after returning to her register from helping a coworker with a problem. I quickly joined her line.

When my turn came, I smiled and joked with her as she tallied my purchases. She was from the same area in New York as my wife, and we laughed about how cold it already was up there. When it came time to pull my used coupon from my pocket, I explained the situation, and she smiled, told me it was no problem whatsoever, and proceeded to deduct 15% from the total. I thanked her profusely, wished her a happy holiday, and left having saved a lot of money.

Getting what you want from other people almost always begins with a friendly, open relationship—even if it must be forged quickly, on the spot. Sadly, too many security practitioners find out the hard way that they need to have these relationships before they can expect to successfully build and manage a security program, whether it is for a building, an IT system or an entire organization. Security is best implemented with open, friendly relationships with senior decision makers, security staff and organizational stakeholders.

Initially, it is critical to have such a relationship with your organizational leaders. They need to perceive you as a key team member with an onerous responsibility. However, they do not want to see you as an overbearing, angry disciplinarian out to demand strict adherence to your security policies. The single most important factor in determining your success as an organizational security practitioner is the rapport you develop with your senior decision makers and the support that results.
Those whose assets you protect must also distinguish you as a competent and approachable professional. Your best cheerleaders should be those who make your company or agency tick. You will want them to bring you their ideas and suggestions, and in turn, they will tout your programs as critical to their success. It works both ways.

You may not currently see your situation in this light. Perhaps you feel your organization’s leadership is not making your security programs the priorities they deserve to be. You may feel employees tend to ignore or try to skirt security regulations. If this is the case, the basis for any improvement begins with creating an atmosphere of, at minimum, mutual respect. Ideally, it will be one of cheerful interaction. Building such an environment may not be easy, but it is necessary.
I have colleagues and acquaintances who have struggled mightily with this challenge. In some cases, they have felt management is ignoring or giving short shrift to their security concerns. When they have endeavored to create the proper environment and failed, they have sometimes found that the best option is to dust off their resumA© and start on Plan B.

Getting what you want as a security professional is not easy, but it always begins with two mutually open and friendly parties. Look for the body language, and if the situation doesn’t look right, simply go on to the next clerk.

John McCumber is a security and risk professional. He is the author of Assessing and Managing Security Risk in IT Systems: A Structured Methodology from Auerbach Publications. Mr. McCumber can be reached at [email protected].