As vice president of information services at a large company, Whitmer was second in command at the headquarters for a large project with wide impact, and he and his IT team were working long days to meet aggressive deadlines. In an effort to make life easier any way he could, he encouraged casual dress for every day of the week and adopted it himself. However, his team was in a separate building from the rest of the company, and when Whitmer went across the street to meet with the executives, he didn't think to change clothes. While it was never commented on, when they named a new CIO, it wasn't him.

The lesson Whitmer walked away with isn't groundbreaking, but it is an easy one to overlook or dismiss. Anyone looking to be a CIO needs to weigh the benefits of staff camaraderie against the benefits of projecting authority. "I was trying to be supportive of my team," he says, "but what they really needed--and what I needed to be--was a leader." At the majority of companies, CIOs are not people who can or should act like they're just one of the group, and Whitmer has taken that to heart as he has moved up into the role of global CIO and left the day-to-day IT operations--and casual dress--behind.

Michael Whitmer is global CIO and North American executive VP of operations at Hudson Highland Group. He is a group mentor in Pathways, the IT leadership development program of the , a global peer advisory community founded by the publishers of CIO magazine.