And while Bolton isn't convinced that a person needs charisma to be an effective IT leader, he does believe that some introverted technologists with the right qualities can be groomed.

"I know a lot of introverts who have become successful CIOs," said Bolton, who participated in an IT leadership panel discussion last week at a meeting held in Rye Brook, New York, by the Fairfield, Conn., and Westchester, N.Y., chapter of SIM. Potential IT leaders "have to develop a sense of self-awareness of who you are and who you're about that leads to a sense of self-confidence," he said.

To be a leader, "you have to know what your own style is and what works for you. And you have to find people whom you can develop who are able to find their own leadership style," Bolton said.

Effective IT leaders draw upon other qualities, of course, including the ability to set and communicate a vision for the IT organization, a capacity to market and sell that vision to IT staffers and business executives, "and the charisma to motivate," said Tom Pettibone, co-founder and managing partner at Transition Partners Co. in Reston, Va., and a former CIO at Philip Morris USA Inc. and New York Life Insurance Co.

Those types of leadership qualities, said Pettibone, are "something that's in the internal DNA" of a person. "You have to find people with a little bit of that DNA and build on top of that."