Day 1 – The mindset of cybersecurity leadership and multi-team collaboration
Focus: Raising awareness
Key concepts
- Understanding multi-team system dynamics and how mindset shapes behaviour and outcomes
- Exploring how presence, tone, and emotional reactions build or erode trust
- Recognising how individual influence can reduce friction and prevent unintended disruption
- Creating space for structured shared strategy sessions to reinforce alignment and team motivation
- Technical skill as necessary but insufficient without clarity, consistency, and communication
Learning activities
- Mapping multi-team interactions across routine and crisis operations
- Identifying pain points in collaboration between teams
- Practising the sharing, taking, and mapping of perspectives to build awareness
- Using the Autonomy, Belonging, Competence framework to analyse motivational barriers
- Exploring communication styles, flexing behaviours under pressure, and adjusting approach
- Facilitated discussions and experiential exercises to disrupt default approaches and introduce new perspectives
Day 2 – The mechanics of cybersecurity leadership and multi-team collaboration
Focus: Applying tools and strategies
Key concepts
- Creating space for collaborative solutions rather than providing all the answers
- Encouraging shared understanding through exploration rather than control
- Recognising that initial interpretations may be incomplete during crisis response
- Aligning communication, decision-making, and accountability frameworks as complexity increases
- Negotiating priorities across individual, team, and system-wide goals
- Leading across multi-team systems by informing, persuading, aligning, and mobilising stakeholders
- Building a coalition of the willing to support shared organisational priorities
Learning activities
- Practising adaptive techniques for brainstorming, decision-making, and idea refinement
- Prioritising goals across individual, team, and multi-team levels
- Flexing communication styles to build buy-in through structured storytelling
- Boundary-spanning exercises to share perspectives and coordinate across teams
- Applying tools that reinforce alignment and collaboration within multi-team systems
- Facilitated group exercises mirroring real-world cybersecurity decision flows
Exam and assessments
This course does not include any formal assessments.
Hands-on learning
This workshop, as delivered at Black Hat, uses an experiential, sandbox-style approach grounded in research on CSIRTs and cybersecurity teams. Participants use analogue tools to test new strategies, practise communication methods, explore team dynamics, and reinforce behaviours that transfer directly to the workplace. Exercises are intentionally low-stakes, allowing space to experiment, reflect, and learn from expert facilitators.
About the subject matter experts
Dr Daniel Shore is a workplace psychology specialist with extensive experience supporting multi-team systems in complex, unpredictable environments. His expertise in cybersecurity leadership is grounded in a multi-year research programme funded by the US Department of Homeland Security and multiple European governments. He applies a human-centred approach to improving collaboration, motivation, and performance across cybersecurity teams.
Zac Broomfield is an expert in communication, collaboration, and multi-team development with a decade of experience designing training programmes and coaching leaders. He brings a practical approach to helping diverse teams improve performance, strengthen relationships, and develop shared understanding. Both Dr Shore and Zac Broomfield are co-founders of MultiTeam Solutions and deliver this training to cybersecurity professionals globally.
