Unleashing the Full Potential of the People You Lead
Minette Norman, speaker, leadership consultant, and award-winning author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader and The Psychological Safety Playbook, shares her unique insights and experiences in unleashing the full potential of the people you lead.
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Minette previously spent decades leading global technical teams in the Silicon Valley software industry and knows that when groups embrace diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs emerge and innovation escalates.
Her most recent position before starting her consultancy was as vice president of engineering practice at Autodesk. She was responsible for influencing more than 3500 engineers around the globe and focused on state of the art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
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1) Breaking into the Inner Circle
When Minette was applying for the role of vice president of engineering practice at Autodesk, a role that had previously only been filled by men, the senior vice president who was interviewing her explained that she already had two strikes against her:
She was never an engineer herself.
The engineering leadership in the company is a boys’ club.
Minette did get the role and stayed in that position for five years.
“Even though I had privilege, I had power, I had influence, I never felt like I was in the inside club.” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that no matter what she did, she couldn’t quite find her way into the inner circle of the people who got time with the executive staff, opportunities, and visibility.
“I felt like I had to fight all the time for my message, for my work. [...] This is so common that people feel they don't have a voice, they're not appreciated, because they just don't conform to the group norms. They're somehow different. They're somehow other.” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that leaders mostly have good intentions but have no idea where to start to create conditions where everyone feels like they're part of the inside group.
This is why Minette became interested in psychological safety.
“Innovation and new ideas come from the people who think differently but we're not enabling them to fully participate.” - Minette Norman
2) Overcoming False Narratives
During the application process for the vice president position, Minette set up meetings with engineering leaders to ask them their concerns and what they needed in terms of leadership, change, and transformation.
She specifically asked them about their concerns about having her in the role.
Minette received some great advice from a CTO during this process.
“He said to me, you're asking the wrong question.” - Minette Norman
Minette was asking - What are my weaknesses coming into this role?
When she should have been asking - What am I bringing that no one else could bring into this role?
From this experience, Minette learned that she didn’t need to pretend to be someone else or something she was not.
Throughout this process, Minette had been telling herself stories that were NOT TRUE.
She thought people were not going to embrace her and it was going to be an uphill battle. When in reality, they embraced her and it was actually the technology changes that were causing fear.
3) Overcoming Fear
Fear tends to hold us captive. Minette shares how she overcomes this fear.
By having a track record of doing hard things.
Minette explains that in a previous role, she led a large transformation of the localization department.
“We were threatened with being eliminated completely unless we did something different. So I had spent several years reimagining and transforming a department from being cut to a cutting edge industry leader presenting at conferences.” - Minette Norman
Minette had done hard things before so she knew she could do them again.
She explains that this experience gave her the confidence that she knew how to do hard things and how to lead change effectively.
“If I had not had that experience, I probably would not have dared apply for the engineering leadership job, but I saw it as just another step in my leadership journey.” - Minette Norman
4) Shifting the Narrative Around Failure
The idea of failing forward is so uncommon to so many people.
Minette gives a science example: If you’re doing experiments, you expect many will fail before you get a successful outcome. Minette explains that we should treat the business world a bit more like that.
“If we want to innovate, we have got to give some leeway to ourselves as leaders and to our employees to experiment, to learn from what goes badly.” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that failure is seen as taboo in the business world.
There is the expectation that projects are always going to be on time, on budget, and have an amazing outcome. When in reality, we may have to compromise on something.
“Leaders often say these are non-negotiables. Well, how are you going to do all of that and innovate and do something new?” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that although we may not want a big failure, let's have smaller failures that we learn from, that we talk about openly, and that we can recover from and do better going forward.
There is the misconception that you have to be perfect as a leader, but you will inevitably mess up and make a bad decision at some point. Be open about these failures and share what you have learned and what you will be doing differently going forward.
“My team really respected that I was able to change course based on new information.” - Minette Norman
5) The Intersection of DEI and Innovation
The data says that diverse teams outperform homogenous teams.
However, Minette explains that those diverse teams do not outperform the homogeneous teams unless they have a culture of inclusion and psychological safety.
If you bring in a highly diverse workforce and you don't enable them to experiment, fail, speak up when there's a problem, ask hard questions, and disagree, then what you get is groupthink.
“You can bring a diverse team together, and then they all feel this need to conform and need to agree, and you don't get to tap into the power of that diversity, the diversity of brains and experiences and cultures and personalities, because everyone feels this pressure to get it exactly right, to be like everybody else and to agree with one another.” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that it is a constant investment that we have to make - not only do we need to bring in a diverse workforce and have equitable practices in place to make sure everyone has the same opportunities, but we also need to relentlessly invest in culture building.
“As a leader, how do I show up every day to set the tone for asking those hard questions, for being the dissenting voice, for not always going along with the group? [...] Leaders set the tone for that.” - Minette Norman
6) Creating Safe Spaces in High Stress Work Environments
Minette explains that the human brain does not distinguish between real physical danger and your boss criticizing you in public.
“We are so often in that state of sensing danger at work. This is a high-stakes situation. I'm being attacked. We're being attacked.” - Minette Norman
What then happens is that we go into a very narrow way of thinking.
“I am in survival mode and I'm not at my best because I can do only one of three things. I can freeze, I can flee, or I can fight.” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that we will often fight when we feel we’re under threat.
“We yell at someone, we attack back, we criticize, we deflect blame. And these are the situations where we cannot create an inclusive and safe environment for everybody. We shut down the voices we need to hear.” - Minette Norman
To combat this, Minette shares that we have to recognize when we're getting into these states of fight, flight, or freeze and we have to learn to PAUSE.
“That's how we can keep the dialog going instead of shutting it down. We can continue to invite divergent perspectives instead of silencing them. But we have to be very mindfully aware of how we are reacting as individuals because our brains instinct is to keep ourselves in survival mode and that is not helpful in the workplace.” - Minette Norman
Minette explains that when there is not a high level of psychological safety, women are often the first to suffer because we so often are fighting for a seat at the table and fighting for a voice.
“Women often feel like they have to be more perfect than their male counterparts, and therefore they experience a lack of psychological safety more viscerally.” - Minette Norman
According to Minette, people who are at the intersection of multiple marginalized groups, feel like they do not have the same ability to fail as others because they are held to a different standard. It's not an equal playing field.
7) Measuring Psychological Safety
Psychological safety feels intangible for many people, but there are ways to measure it.
Minette shares that there is a survey and methodology that is validated by a Harvard business professor who specializes in psychological safety, Amy Edmondson. From this, you can learn where you are in terms of psychological safety and where you can improve.
“Where I have a problem is that so many executives just do the measurements and they don't invest in the work. [...] Measuring for measuring sake will not move the needle in any way. We have to invest in the work because there's real work that has to be done.” - Minette Norman
To hear the full conversation, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 72.
About The Hosts: Archita And Olivia
ARCHITA
Archita Sivakumar Fritz is the Host and Producer of the Embracing Only Podcast. Archita is a MedTech and Life Science Strategist. She is a LinkedIn Top Voice for her insights into product strategy and nonprofit management, and the creation of inclusive cultures that champion a 'speak up' philosophy.
Following a successful 19+ year corporate career she now helps C Suite across organizations as a Fractional Product Marketing Leader through her company Ready Set Bold.
She works with individuals with 10+ years of corporate experience to find new paths away from toxic or underappreciative environments, enabling both personal fulfillment and broader organizational impact.
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Olivia Grant Cream is the host and producer of the Embracing Only podcast. Nothing makes her happier than providing a platform to women who are changing the world.
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