HUMAN Security’s Lindsay Kaye on Why Empathy Is Non-negotiable

The Story This time

Lindsay Kaye‘s career turned on a single decision: someone taught her reverse engineering despite her lack of experience, shaping her leadership philosophy around giving others similar opportunities. As VP of Threat Intelligence at HUMAN Security, she maintains hands-on technical work not as a compromise but as a strategic choice that builds credibility, prevents over-promising on timelines, and ensures she understands what her distributed team confronts daily, tackling sophisticated ad fraud campaigns.

Lindsay also discusses her evolution from firm-deadline enforcement to empathy-driven management, her trust bucket framework that evaluates patterns rather than individual mistakes, and how she actively prevents hub-and-spoke isolation by encouraging peer-to-peer collaboration across six time zones.

Stories We’re Telling Today

• Maintaining hands-on technical work as a leader to build credibility, prevent over-promising, and understand team challenges firsthand
• Trying on different leadership styles early in your career creates authentic leadership rather than forcing predetermined molds
• Building trust across globally distributed teams through peer-to-peer one-on-ones and rotating collaboration partners
• The trust bucket framework for evaluating team performance over time, rather than making judgments based on individual missed deadlines
• Why saying “I don’t know” and asking for help demonstrate leadership strength rather than weakness in technical security environments
• How the evolution from firm deadline enforcement to empathy-driven management improves team performance and psychological safety
• Managing complex investigations across six time zones by time-boxing days for meetings versus deep technical work
• Creating real-world impact narratives that motivate teams beyond just internal company benefits
• Mentoring junior analysts into reverse engineering by emphasizing that repeated failure is the learning path, rather than something to avoid

Too busy; didn’t listen:

• Maintain hands-on reverse engineering work as a leader because technical credibility prevents over-promising timelines and builds authentic leadership.
• Empathy-driven management recognizes that transparency and understanding of life circumstances improve team performance.
• Distributed teams can avoid hub-and-spoke isolation by encouraging peer-to-peer one-on-ones, rotating collaboration partners, and time-boxing days for meetings.
• A trust bucket framework treats team performance as cumulative rather than judging individuals on a single missed deadline.

Skip to the Highlight of the Episode

17:12-17:22 “I think that making sure that they get to do work that they enjoy that benefits the company and then helping them understand how the things that they do actually benefit the company is really important.”