From Providing Meaningful Work to Betting on Yourself: How to Grow as a Tech Leader

Marnie Wilking, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Booking.com, one of the world's leading digital travel companies, is responsible for the cybersecurity strategy and operations for the company globally. Wilking recently relocated from Arizona to Booking.com’s headquarters in the Netherlands, where she leads a team of global security engineers, researchers, and technologists.

Throughout her two-decade career in the cybersecurity field, Marnie has grown into an empathetic, and purpose-driven leader who provides guidance and stays calm in chaos. “My goal for my team is that everyone loves the work they do, that they genuinely like the people they work with, and that they feel their work is purposeful,” she tells us. “I truly enjoy creating growth opportunities and seeing my team flourish.”

Looking for inspiration on how to be a leader who motivates and uplifts others? Read on for Marnie’s tried-and-true advice and insight from her personal journey.

To begin, let’s discuss your career journey. What’s the one career move you’ve made that you’re most proud of, and what did you learn from this move?

I left a large financial services company after working there for 16 years. I realized that I’d gotten too comfortable, and I wasn't learning what I needed to grow. So, I started looking for a new role, and found one fairly quickly. It was still within cybersecurity, so it wasn't a complete job switch, but moving to a new smaller organization after such a long tenure was really out of my comfort zone. I think that women – more often than men – find taking risks to be difficult, but I also think we underestimate the power of saying what we want out loud. When the people who want to support us know what we want, they want to find ways to help us succeed. 

I also found that I was more than ready to take the leap. Everything I’d learned up until that point prepared me for the new role, and that gave me the space and opportunity to learn new things. It's important to remember that developing your career should involve continued growth and challenge. Sometimes "growth" comes in the form of a promotion, sometimes in the form of added responsibilities or a new project, sometimes it's a lateral move. You get to define what "growth" means to you.

Part of your growth has involved your development  as a leader. How do you approach building, supporting, and managing a team?

My approach is: I show up, I care, I deliver on promises, and I communicate.

I start by understanding the team structure and current roles before deciding whether anything needs to be changed to enhance the team’s stretch and career growth opportunities. When I do make changes, I make them thoughtfully and purposefully. 

Providing context and tying our work back to business objectives shows my team that the work they’re doing is meaningful so everyone remains engaged. Everyone will have different motivations and goals, but if you can paint the vision and help them connect the dots, eventually they will inspire others to understand and work towards it, which creates even wider engagement and in turn, high-performing teams. Managing a team also involves having discussions to understand both career goals and existing strengths in order to help get individuals into roles where they can have the most impact. 

How do you make sure that your direct reports feel well-supported?

The more time you invest in getting to know your team, the better insights you gain into their strengths, interests, and professional goals, helping people feel valued as individuals. 

I make sure to pay attention to my team, try to remember family member names (including pets; they're family, too!) and make sure to keep in tune with what else is going on in their personal lives. As a leader, I try to build psychological safety by cultivating curiosity and a learner mindset, where team members ask for help and challenge the status quo without fear. I also encourage my team to take the time to foster deeper connections and to invest in their well-being at work, be that taking a meeting from our roof-top terrace, joining an internal, employee resource group event; or volunteering for a cause they care about. 

Finally, what are your top tips for being an effective leader?

• Always stay focused on your long-term career and personal goals, even if your priorities change month-to-month, or sometimes hour-to-hour. You might plan to work on that presentation all morning, but you get a call from the school that your kid broke their arm on the monkey bars — your priorities just changed!

• It's crucial as a leader to understand the difference between "urgent" and "important". With COVID-19, we started to get used to having back-to-back meetings all day, but we now need to step back and think about how we want to prioritize and delegate to have  greater impact – less “doing” and more “leading”. If something is really an emergency, sometimes I need to move things around. I also try to keep one-on-one meetings with individuals on the "important" list. Keep in mind that each delegated task is an opportunity for others to develop.

• Say, "Yes"! If someone is offering you an opportunity that gets you excited, it's because they believe you are ready. You might not feel ready, but trust that they are not going to let you fail, and you have a network of colleagues who want to help you. 

Want to make a career move of your own? Consider saying ‘yes’ to an open role at Booking.com today!