Fed CIO Ghada Ijam on the balancing act of leadership

Ghada Ijam is the CIO for the Federal Reserve System, where she leads the Fed’s technology and cybersecurity professionals to move at the speed of business, driving collaboration and innovation to shape the Fed’s digital future.

Overseeing IT within a federated organization, Ijam partners with leaders across the Reserve Banks and centralized service providers to work as one team for fast and flexible IT delivery, improved digital ways of working, and better insights and decision-making in support of the Fed’s public mission.

On a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast, Ijam opened up her leadership playbook and shared how she navigates the complexities of leading IT at a complicated, multilayered federated organization. Afterwards, we spent some time discussing different aspects of the balancing act leadership requires. What follows is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Dan Roberts: Your former boss Dee Waddell, who was one of our mystery questioners on the podcast, noted that you have an ability to lead with courage and boldness while also building trust and credibility at a very human level. How do you earn this credibility and trust from your team as well as from other stakeholders within the company?

Ghada Ijam: When I show up in a new organization, I feel that it’s important to be open and upfront with team members about who I am as a human being and a leader and how I lead. This gives them insight into who I am and how they’ll interact with me, and it also opens up a communication line and allows the employees to be who they are and show up as they are. That builds trust very early on in the process.

Of course, trust is earned — you don’t force people to trust you. So, another avenue I use is to make sure that my actions match my words. This goes back to being transparent in my communication and my intent and describing the what and the why — this is what we’re doing, and this is why we’re doing what we’re doing.

And then last, having opportunities to touch base with people, through ‘ask me anythings,’ townhall meetings, one-on-one conversations, skip-level conversations. This creates that connection and relationship with the team members and visibility into who I am as a leader, which, again, is a trust builder, for the organization and the individual team members.

In the podcast, you made reference to the heart and the mind, which is another aspect of the balancing act of leadership. How do you lead with attributes like humility and empathy while at the same time balancing the need to have the hard conversations, hold people accountable, and deliver results?

People are excited about doing a great job. So part of how I approach it is talking about how we want to be part of a team that delivers wins and wins with grace, getting them excited about the result, about the work that they’re doing, about the mission, and making them part of the solution. That way, they embrace and become part of the outcome, and they’ll put their hearts and minds into delivering on the mission. It’s focusing on the results first, but also showing up as a leader that has humility and empathy.

As the saying goes, leaders cast a long shadow, and it’s so true — people watch what we do. That’s what influences the culture, and that’s what creates the environment that we work in. I’ll give you an example from when we had an incident in production caused by human error. The natural tendency of a highly results-oriented leader is to show up with a harsh tone asking pointed questions. Instead, the way I chose to show up was with empathy, humbleness, and humility, to say, let’s focus on solving the problem, and after the service is restored, we will understand what happened, and we will work on improving our processes and our practices to correct the problem so that we do not allow it to happen in our environment in the future.

Now, of course, if it was a malicious or intentional act, then a more severe action would have resulted, and the person would have been put on corrective action plans. But in this scenario, it was a human error, but our technology did not prevent it. So the conversation was focused on making sure our technology prevents these kinds of mistakes from happening in the future, ensuring that employees receive the training they need, and learning from this to prevent a future mistake in other areas.

The story about my reaction during the incident spread like wildfire across the organization. It defined the kind of culture that we’re advancing. People felt that we are leading with heart, humility, and empathy, and at the same time, that the outcomes and the results towards the mission that we’re focused on matter.

Another of our mystery questioners on the podcast, Louise Willard, CIO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, says one of your superpowers is your ability to remain calm and steadfast, even when dealing with some very challenging situations. How do you maintain calm in the storm while also being so energized — and energizing the team?

I’m energized by the team that I work with, the work that we’re doing, the opportunities, what can we do with the resources we are entrusted with — talent, technology, investment, support from leadership. All of that energizes me to show up to work every day and make sure that the teams are as energized as I am about the future, about the mission, about what we’re doing, how we’re doing what we’re doing, and the team that we are. That brings me energy and, hopefully, I bring that energy back to the team through my leadership.

As for calm in the storm, again, leaders cast long shadows. If a leader shows up with paranoia, lack of focus, lack of discipline rather than being calm, methodical, and thoughtful about what they’re doing, then it will create churn and organizational chaos. So it’s important to show up with stability and consistency. The best leaders I’ve worked for are leaders that were consistent in their approach. The person that shows up on Monday morning is the same person that shows up on Wednesday morning, and it’s the same person that shows up on Friday afternoon.

Taking time to step back and breathe and then come back energized is another important part of leadership. One of my coaches used to say, ‘Did you take care of yourself today?’ Because leaders that don’t take care of themselves can unintentionally create chaos internally and externally.

I also remind myself that there’s no challenge that’s impossible to overcome. If you look at the challenge as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to evolve, then you will see it from a different perspective. That changes your mindset from chaos and paranoia to calm so you can say, okay, what can I do about the situation? What can I do differently? What can I do the same? What can I learn? Even if I fell on my face and had a misstep, how do I correct it and learn from it, and grow and develop from it?

This applies to both work life and personal life. On a personal level, we all face challenges. Some of those challenges are painful, but they can help us grow. On a work level, there are challenges, but we can lean on the team and we can lean on each other. We can lean on processes and systems and facts and data to help us overcome those challenges. And we can learn from them to make the organization better, to make ourselves as leaders better, and to make ourselves as human beings better.

Another big balancing act leaders are dealing with today is the ability to drive innovation while protecting and securing the organization. Can you talk a bit about how you’re doing that at the Fed?

The big mantra that we have right now, and it’s thanks to Tammy Hornsby Fink, who is our CISO, is that the risk of doing nothing can be higher than the risk of innovating. With that lens in mind, we started to look at innovation with a different perspective. We started looking at some of those tech trends, hype cycles, and new technologies or capabilities that are hitting the market with the lens of, let’s step back and decide: Is the risk of not introducing the emerging technology into this space higher than the risk of taking a leap and understanding and evaluating that technology, and considering some use cases that are relevant for us and for our mission?

On the podcast, I gave an example involving gen AI. The natural tendency from a risk perspective is to say shut it down — because it’s risky, we don’t understand it, we don’t know enough about the technology. But then we looked at it and decided that the risk of shutting it down is higher than the risk of putting it in the environment responsibly. Therefore, we took the path of putting it in the environment responsibly and evaluating the potential use cases, the pros, the cons, the security issues, the implications from a data loss, IP loss, legal, and overall risk posture for the Fed.

It’s really helping us mature all of those practices from a legal perspective, from a policy perspective, from a risk management perspective, and from a technology perspective as we adopt this technology responsibly.

Another person who knows you very well, Bill DeLeo, was curious about the strategies the Federal Reserve uses to attract and retain the people necessary to fulfill your important mission. Could you talk about some of your workforce strategies that are helping you win with talent?

When people look at the Fed, they don’t realize that the Fed has a lot of really interesting technology work and that a third of the Federal Reserve organization is technology professionals. If you look at the landscape of technology leaders across the Fed and the type of roles they take, it is a really rich career path for technology professionals. And, with the transformation strategy that we are advancing, we are introducing a lot of new technologies and innovations to help support and achieve the Fed’s mission.

So it’s a combination of an amazing organization that has a national footprint, a great profile of careers and leaders, and a diverse cadre of talent and skills that we need to achieve our public service mission. There’s also the opportunity to be part of a digital transformation strategy that is combining some of the important legacy technology that’s necessary to run the Fed’s critical systems while also transitioning into modern technologies and agile ways of working. On top of that, only the Fed does what we do. Only the Fed runs Treasury auctions. Only the Fed runs critical payment systems. Being part of an organization that provides those unique solutions for the Central Bank of the United States with a critical mission is another exciting aspect of it, and that’s part of our employee value proposition — to highlight some of the important work we do as an organization.

All of that combined forms the package that we use to market ourselves as a great technology organization within the Federal Reserve System and to attract the talent that we need.

For more insights from Ijam’s leadership journey and playbook, tune in to the Tech Whisperers podcast.