There are many factors to consider when hiring senior security professionals for your team. Evaluation of education and experience is obvious. Assessing the potential risk for failure in the role or the organization is equally important.

Countless articles and studies confirm that most terminations at management and executive levels result from behavior issues as opposed to a lack of relevant knowledge or operational skills. Having worked with hundreds of organizations, we can attest that the security profession is not immune to this phenomenon.

A 2022 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study found 83% of managers felt unprepared to address behavioral challenges. Some HR organizations put that number closer to 90%. Persistent, unaddressed behavioral problems involving conduct, ethics, lack of civility and respect, and authoritative abrasiveness are issues that can affect both your hiring decisions and what types of work issues you will be asked to address within your organization.

These traits are strong predictors of individual challenges with both emotional and cognitive intelligence. Not screening for these issues during your hiring process can cause disruption and performance issues within your team and will have a direct impact on decision-making within your group. They can also become security-related risks to your organization.

The precursors to these traits did not surface a month post-hire. Many organizations and security professionals recognize this and put processes in place to conduct due diligence. This has been effective in the past. However, issues facing hiring authorities today are unprecedented.

As an example, recent survey data suggests that 40% of Americans are susceptible to authoritative appeals and behaviors. People who are more susceptible to authoritarian managers are statistically more likely to have lower cognitive skills in decision-making, both at work and in personal matters.

Research also shows that individuals with lower cognitive abilities (i.e., reasoning, comprehension, and processing speed) are more likely to manage with authoritarian attitudes. Emotional intelligence is also a key factor; those with lower emotional abilities are even more strongly predisposed to authoritarian beliefs and are less adept at navigating complex social or work situations.

This combination of lower cognitive and emotional skills can lead to poorer decision-making, greater reliance on heuristics (mental shortcuts), and a tendency to defer to authority rather than critically evaluate information or alternatives. In organizational and security team settings, these individuals may underperform, feel more stressed, and be more vulnerable to manipulation or burnout.

Given the nature of today’s security-related risk programs that are increasingly driven by intelligence gathering and assessments, the security profession needs to be extremely vigilant in assessing existing and incoming staff for critical thinking and emotional intelligence.

Individuals with low emotional intelligence (EI) and low cognitive intelligence (CI) often struggle to process, correlate, or even seek out information that challenges their existing viewpoints.

Several factors contribute to this pattern:

• Confirmation Bias: People with lower CI are more prone to cognitive biases like confirmation bias, which leads them to favor information that supports their beliefs and ignore or dismiss contradictory evidence.
• Low EI Behaviors: Those with low EI tend to dismiss others’ viewpoints, avoid sensitive or challenging information, and struggle with self-awareness and empathy. They often prioritize their feelings and perspectives, making them less likely to engage with information that could create discomfort or cognitive dissonance.
• Accountability and Blame: Low EI is also linked to a tendency to avoid personal responsibility and to blame others for negative outcomes, further reducing the likelihood of self-reflection or openness to new information.
• Cycle Reinforcement: Because these individuals do not recognize or address the effects of their actions and avoid challenging situations, their biases and limited perspectives are continually reinforced, perpetuating the cycle.

In summary, low EI and CI cause people to be less likely to correlate or seek out conflicting information. This sustains a self-reinforcing loop of narrow viewpoints and resistance to change. This behavior is contradictory to building and supporting an effective, functioning security organization that can align with and support your organization’s success.