At Neythri’s sold-out San Francisco event last week, 50 attendees had the privilege of listening to Minette Norman share the leadership lessons she’s learned over her 30-year career, leading globally distributed, multi-cultural teams. Neythri.org Founding Circle member Dr. Geetha Murali & Room to Read were our gracious hosts for the evening.

Minette is a keynote speaker on topics of transformative leadership, creating inclusive workplaces, collaboration in the workplace, fostering innovation, and challenging the status quo. Named by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Businesses” (2017), one of the YWCA Silicon Valley’s “Tribute to Women” Honorees (2018), and “Business Role Model of the Year” in the Women in IT/Silicon Valley Awards (2018), Minette is a recognized leader with a unique perspective. Minette holds degrees in Drama and French from Tufts University and studied at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

Most recently, Minette served as Vice President of Engineering Practice at Autodesk, where she transformed how Autodesk developed software. Responsible for more than 3,500 engineers around the globe despite not being an engineer herself, she focused on state-of-the-art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture. There is no single formula for being a successful and effective leader, even in the world of science, tech, and engineering. There is, however, a universal need for leaders to connect with the people in their organizations. In this talk, Minette discussed how human interaction, empathy, and embracing diversity can transform our workplaces, and how everyone can play a role in that transformation.

Asking for Help & Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Starting her career in Technology with a degree in Drama & French, Minette learned the value of asking for help early — her first job was digitizing library cards at the French Trade Commission! Soon after, she was hired as a Technical Writer for Adobe Photoshop in its launch year.

Creating a diverse and inclusive business environment requires us to step outside of your comfort zone. Minette reminded us that it’s in pushing through the fear and discomfort that we’ll find ourselves learning and growing. We need to believe in ourselves, even if we encounter resistance. At some point, we may even have someone tell us that we will fail at our job of being a leader. To remedy this, we can get to know our team, ask for their help, and help them grow whenever we can. Those walls of resistance should start coming down!

Another thing to recognize and prepare for is Impostor Syndrome — know it’s going to show up all through our career! Be ready to self-talk on all the things we’re good at when we have moments of self-doubt. Collect all the praise and recommendations, thank you notes and accolades we’ve received throughout our career in one document so we can review that whenever we need a pick me up!

Fearless leadership breeds a fearless organization. This will open up doors that would have previously never been walked through. As Gloria Steinem said, “Being brave is not being unafraid, but feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”

Empathy & Psychological Safety in an Organisation

As humans, we are wired to be connected and crave connection. While we intrinsically need each other, we don’t always work that well with one another. Part of our ability to connect is empathy. Cultivating empathy should be considered an essential leadership skill. Forget beliefs about empathy being soft, because it is anything but that. The Army Manual of Leadership lists empathy as one of its top values.

Self-awareness is really important for all of us at any stage of leadership and that includes being aware of our triggers and reactions. One of the first steps to finding our early warning system is to recognize what it is that we do when we get defensive.

The power of the pause and replacing judgment with curiosity are two key practices to master as a collaborative leader and they go a long way in creating the psychological safety required for high functioning and happy teams. Google’s Project Aristotle studied hundreds of Google’s teams to figure out why some stumbled while others soared. The key ingredient was Psychological Safety.

References & Resources

To wrap up, Minette shared these great references and resources to further our journey toward inspiring leadership.

• Radical Collaboration: Five Essential Skills to Overcome Defensiveness and Build Successful Relationships by James Tamm

• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy Edmondson

• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman

• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman

• Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller

• Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber by Susan Fowler