Staying Human in Cyber
It started with a late-night email that could have waited until morning. A single line written in haste, but read in frustration. That small moment reminded me how much of our world runs on interpretation. Not technology. Not alerts. Interpretation.
In cyber, we talk about patching systems, but we rarely talk about patching misunderstandings. And sometimes, the heaviest incidents are not breaches or outages — they’re human misfires.
That’s why I wrote this. Not as advice, but as reflection. Because if you’ve ever left a meeting or closed a chat window and thought, “That could have gone better”, this one’s for you.
Everything Is Urgent, Until It Isn’t
Do you ever feel like your inbox has turned into an anxiety factory? Every message marked urgent. Every meeting invite humming with tension. I’ve had those days too. The ones where you explain the same decision five different ways and still wonder if you’ve missed someone. In cyber, it’s rarely about the tool or the ticket. It’s about people, and how they react when uncertainty creeps in.
We call it stakeholder management, but it’s really emotion management fear, perception, and politics playing out in real time. What’s helped me is learning not just to read tone, but to clarify it. Because tone isn’t one person’s burden, it’s shared responsibility. As leaders, we shape that tone by how we ask questions, how we follow up, and how we close loops.
And sometimes, clarity doesn’t come from another email. It comes from a call. A five-minute conversation can do what five threads never could. Because voice carries what text often strips away humanity.
Once you start seeking clarity, you realise something deeper tone and feedback are often connected.
Fault or Feedback
You’ve probably been there. A message lands sharper than it should. “Why didn’t you flag this?” It sounds like a question, but it feels like a verdict. Sometimes feedback isn’t feedback at all. It’s stress looking for direction. And when you care about what you do, it can feel personal.
I’ve learned to pause and ask myself, Is this coming from concern or control? Because reacting to tone can spiral fast, but responding to intent keeps the focus on what matters. It took me a while to understand this but empathy doesn’t mean absorbing everything. It means separating the message from the emotion, and then addressing both with clarity.
That balance between empathy and boundaries is what leads to the next layer of leadership how to hold empathy when the environment tests it.
Empathy Isn’t a Soft Skill. It’s a Survival Skill.
For me empathy doesn’t mean you’re soft. It means you’re steady enough to pause before reacting. To ask, “What’s really driving this?” instead of, “How dare they?”
There have been days I’ve wanted to hit reply and explain everything, but I stopped. Because I’ve learned that when emotions run high, more words rarely help. Instead, I journal. I write the first response privately. It helps me clear the frustration before I speak publicly. Over time, that habit made me more aware of not just on others’ reactions, but of my own.
Empathy is not about taking on everyone’s emotion. It’s about staying aware enough to steer through it. And once you see that clearly, a question naturally follows how do you turn empathy into action?
So What Do You Do
When things get tense, I go back to a few simple habits.
- I breathe.
- I write.
- I don’t take the bait.
- I remind myself that escalation often says more about the sender than the receiver.
It’s not avoidance. It’s awareness. Because staying grounded is the only way to respond with clarity instead of noise. Still, there are times when silence stops feeling like strength and starts feeling like surrender. And that’s when leadership takes another form knowing when to speak up.
When Do You Respond
Empathy has limits. Even mountains do. There’s a moment when staying silent feels like watching misunderstanding grow roots.
When your values or intent are being misread, silence no longer serves clarity.
That’s when you respond. You don’t mirror their tone, but you do clarify yours. You remind, respectfully, that calm isn’t weakness. It’s choice. Leadership isn’t about volume. It’s about direction. And when you find your voice, the real test becomes can you stay steady after you’ve spoken?
Be Like a Mountain
Not unshakable. Not unbothered. Just deliberate.
Because not everyone will understand your approach, and that’s alright. Staying human in cyber isn’t about perfection. It’s about being intentional even when things around you aren’t. I don’t always get it right. But every time I choose calm over chaos, it changes the outcome. It changes tone. It changes trust. Because the truth is, leadership isn’t built in noise. It’s built in moments of quiet clarity when you choose presence over pressure.
Closing Section
This is the part we don’t talk about enough in cyber the human layer that keeps everything else standing. To close out I believe the choices we make when no one’s watching, the tone we set when everyone’s tired and the pause we take before replying is a good way to go.
Technology may protect systems, but empathy protects people. And without people, even the strongest system fails. So maybe staying human isn’t just about surviving the system. Maybe it’s about shaping it.
Because cybersecurity isn’t just a practice, it’s a reflection of character.
Thirdeye Intelligence 
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