10 Leadership lessons from Nora Denzel as a Silicon Valley Tech Executive
Not often do we get the opportunity to interact with women who have made significant strides in their careers, and this was one of those exceptional experiences.
The Power to Our Women Livecast Series featuring global female leaders and change makers is hosted by the women of Impact Africa Network and is designed to inspire a new generation of female leaders.
Nora Denzel is the Director AMD, Ericsson, NortonLifeLock and SUSE Linux. She is a humorous story teller, loves learning and is passionate about mentorship.
Here are ten takeaways from this brilliant episode;
1. Take advantage of opportunities and make the most out of them.
When Nora was starting out as a software engineer at IBM years ago, it was a tricky path because she came from a school that IBM wouldn’t necessarily hire from. Regardless, she was determined to crush the expectations set for her to fail.
Some said, ‘I’ll interview her but I’m sure we won’t take her,’ another said, ‘Let’s take a chance.’
I got my first opening and I knew I was lucky, I knew it was a gift, and I knew I was going to take full advantage of the gift. I had a chip on my shoulder and I had to prove them wrong.
2. You’re a leader before you get the title.
Leaders are great influencers even for those who don’t follow them.
Part of doing a good job is telling others about the work you did. Don’t be shy of giving yourself credit. You’re not promoting yourself, but the problem you fixed, and by that you’re reducing the learning curve of others.
She goes to add that when you get the title, you’re positioned by your followers. Therefore, you need to be a better version of yourself; use your strengths, guard your integrity and be a positive leader.
3. Always learn from the best wheel maker
Through informational interviews, Nora made time to identify, meet and learn from different people who were the best in their field. Her determination at the time was to learn how to operate a smaller company, and she needed to understand how people who had money and time in bigger companies developed their products, so that when the time came for her to lead, she would have the knowledge of it.
I want to take you to lunch and pick your brain, and I’m gonna ask you some great questions, and I’m going to be quiet, and I want to learn everything I can learn.
She insists that she never wanted to be a know-it-all, but instead a learn-it-all.
4. Change your mindset about listening: Approach like a scientist
When listening and trying to learn from someone, stay curious to uncover the difference and similarities in ideas. You never have to agree with someone, but it is important to hear the person out, identify the facts and find the middle ground.
When people had a view that wasn’t my own, I really had to change my mindset. When people talk to me sometimes, they act like they are trying to get me to believe what they believe. People talk to you for different reasons, but I always approached it like a scientist, I wasn’t trying to get you on my side, but I would defend my position if I have to.
5. Strive to stand out, not stick out.
Nora shares that she couldn’t control sticking out as a woman in male-dominated panels, but she needed to modify people’s expectations of her because she didn’t want to be differentiated by her gender, but to stand out for her capabilities.
She ensured that in whatever she needed to do, she wasn’t just fast, but effective.
Being a woman didn’t help or hurt my style of leading. I’m a big data person and I always need to see the numbers. They did a study on the most successful leaders , so I was curious to find out if it was the school they went to, or their grades, and it turned out that it really was the leaders that could adapt the fastest and change their style, but keep their values, to take advantage of the situation, whether it was war time, peace time or or a pandemic era at a company.
6. Startups bet on jockeys, not horses
Nora strongly insists that the startup world especially in Silicon Valley bets on the people.
If you can do something when the odds are against you and no one believes in you, then we give you tonnes of money, knowing that you could do more with money, time and people; the market could always be figured out later.
Therefore, are you able to adjust? How do you handle criticism? Do you listen? How do you handle failure? Can you learn? Those factors separate the high achievers, from those that do well.
7. It’s not what you know, it’s how fast you can learn
From her experience, Nora believes that in startups, for exponential growth, your ability and speed to learn is paramount.
Set a learning agenda, what you would like to learn in the next 90 days?
In developing products, her hypothesis is that the target market needs the product, but when she would go to test it, she would do it as though she didn’t know, and that is the difference.
You may feel vulnerable for admitting you don’t know something, but be brave to accept where you go wrong and take the lesson from it.
8. Success takes commitment
Nora mentions that most people look at her success now and imagine that it happened overnight, and she describes how hard she worked since the very beginning.
You get a job in a company, and they define your role; I made sure I understood who was before me in the process, who was after me, what the ultimate goal was, what the financials in the process were and how we would sell the process. So I worked very hard that people would ask, ‘What’s wrong with you, we don’t have to work that hard.’
In those days, the computers were mainframe and so they’d take systems down on the weekend, and no one could log in. Regardless, she would go to the IBM branch where she sold their products and would request to speak to customers; which was unheard of!
9. Learn how to project more self-confidence
It’s important that women understand their traits and learn to be more confident, learn to have a more executive presence, even when filled with doubt.
Based on a qualitative study, men tend to project more confidence and are more comfortable taking risks.
10. Stay on a vertical learning curve
“When you crave learning, you will always be on the hunt for knowledge. It is important to develop this attitude for self-improvement,” she sums up.
“The next generation of female leaders have so much more power than they think. They are stronger! And can effect systemic change. They simply need to believe they can”
~Nora Denzel
“Women are much more effective at leading and nurturing complex people-centric systems, and startups are the quintessential people centric systems of our day, giving women an advantage in their development.”
~Mark Karake, founder & CEO, Impact Africa Network
