The case for the ‘ambidextrous’ CIO

Binghamton University professor Surinder Kahai believes an effective CIO leads with both hands.

In a study, published in November 2024, Kahai and two researchers made the case for the “ambidextrous CIO,” what they define as a leadership style that’s both transactional and transformational.

While transactional leaders “motivate by exchanging rewards for performance,” the report said, Kahai shared traits of a transformational leader with IT Brew:

• Individualized consideration and focus on one’s personal growth
• Willingness to challenge the status quo
• The ability to articulate in ways that motivate employees “intrinsically”
• The ability to be a role model

“The transactional motivates you extrinsically, gives you a bonus, gives you recognition, gives you rewards. The transformational leader transforms the basis of the motivation,” Kahai told IT Brew.

Kahai and colleagues surveyed CIOs or top executives at 68 organizations, along with their direct reports and a fellow business leader. The researchers asked respondents how frequently their top IT leader engaged in behaviors demonstrating transformational, transactional, and “laissez-faire” leadership.

“Ambidextrous leadership promotes mechanisms to develop shared domain knowledge between IT and business specialists,” the report determined.

Kahai spoke with IT Brew about what those mechanisms are exactly and why they matter.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

If I’m a CIO on day one, what “mechanisms” would you recommend I implement?

We’re not asking a marketing person to continue just doing their marketing stuff; they have to attend vendor presentations. They have to attend IT conferences. They have to learn the basic skills of IT. On the other hand, the IT people should be meeting with customers, meeting with the suppliers of the company. They should be going to the business conferences so that they can pick up the business knowledge. Business people, for instance, could be attending workshops, or IT people could be creating those workshops with their business people.

How do you convince an executive saying, “Look, we can’t afford to send marketers to IT conferences”?

This is where a transformation leader helps, right? A transformation leader will, through their behavior, be able to persuade a CEO and the top-management team to do things—not because the CIO is saying it, but because they themselves get engaged with that vision. You require a CIO who thinks about IT in business terms. You can’t say, “Oh, we should do AI, because it’s going to be big.” No, no: “This is going to help our company make so much money, and this is why.”

If I’m a new CIO, and our company is debating the use of a new generative AI product to help our business, what are examples of mechanisms showing a healthy relationship between business and IT?

The CIO should first learn themselves, and make sure the IT professionals have learned enough, and also make sure the business people are learning. There will have to be training. Once you develop that knowledge, then it will be the business people who will champion it, not the CIO. And that’s what we want…When they are the ones chasing the CIO, they will also be willing to give the CIO the money.

Transformational leadership seems good for any leader of any company. What is it, specifically, about IT that requires this?

Technology is transformation, right? Who would say that GenAI is not transformational, or blockchain? Many of the technologies that come out are transformational in nature: The internet was transformational in nature. Ecommerce was transformational in nature. To sell that, you definitely require the ability to tie that technology with business.