Leadership, commercial savvy turn a CIO into a CEO

Leadership and commercial intuition are the two most important skills for CIOs hoping to become CEOs, according to silicon.com readers.

Leadership earned the most votes in a recent reader poll, with nearly 40 per cent of the 226 respondents saying it was the key to IT chiefs moving into the top corporate job. Commercial intuition ranked second with 25 per cent of the vote.

Networking and contacts, sales and marketing and innovation and creativity were seen as less essential to climbing the corporate ladder, with each receiving less than 10 per cent of readers' votes.

Readers placed more of a premium on a leisure-time activity - golfing ability - which 13 per cent named as an essential skill for wannabe-CEOs.

While historically few CIOs take over the running of the business, Betfair's IT guy David Yu was recently promoted to CEO.

Talking to silicon.com after Yu's appointment, Cathy Holley, partner at headhunting firm Boyden UK, said the attributes CIOs need to possess to make the move include stakeholder management, the ability to be influencial, "real" leadership - not just managing people - and strategic thinking and commercial intuition.