Taking risks and embracing change is instrumental to career success, says Dr. Alex Birrell.
She leads the fast-paced start-up, Paftec, a manufacturer of respirators protecting people from airborne hazards like asbestos and Ebola.
Birrell’s also a co-founder of Heads Over Heels, a not-for-profit organisation helping female CEOs and entrepreneurs, make the connections they need to grow their businesses.
In this edited extract from Women of Influence, Birrell tells Gillian Fox what she knows about becoming the CEO of a fast-growth company – and offers tips that may help other women get there too.
What can career women learn from your leadership journey?
I’ve got quite an eclectic background, not a traditional corporate experience. One thing I’ve got value from is the ability to jump into different avenues.
I started out as a vet and segued into medical research, which led me onto the commercial pathway that drives my role today. I ended up at PricewaterhouseCoopers with an MBA and a scholarship through Chief Executive Women.
My leap was quite extraordinary. It really opened up my eyes to the ability to take risks, to continue a learning experience and undertake a journey of understanding and self-improvement.
How might emerging female leaders benefit from risking such a major career change?
A different set of experiences allows you to go into different roles and industries and start asking “why?” It’s a valuable skillset to start interrogating assumptions about why a company does things one way or the other, and why processes exist.
How do featured female CEOs benefit from Heads Over Heels?
Women are fabulous at starting businesses. They’re really good at networking, but what they lack for a successful scalable business is the business connections to the influencers.
Janet Menzies, Melissa Widner and I came up with a very structured model to get these CEOs in front of business leaders, to get the connections they need to instantly scale their businesses. We actively screen a group of female CEOs leading or starting growth companies.
Why are these connections crucial for female CEOs in particular?
Connections de-risk their business by creating corporate channels to market. It de-risks their business by giving them good advisors, whether that be accounting or legal or financial – things women often lack.
Do you have any tips for women who are looking for their next promotion?
To win a promotion, every day you must turn up to work and do your job. Consistency and persistence are super important for women. To go up, we have to stay in the game.
Part of that is identifying organisational champions: finding a champion who’s going to be placing you and your name in various areas so that you can progress your career.
Where can emerging female leaders look for sponsors?
I often have younger people coming to me saying, “How do I get a good network?”
It’s about investment of time over a long period. You need to lay down some of those relationships today for ten years from now. You need to have that very long-term horizon.
If I think about the people who are helping me today, I met them ten years ago. We had on-and-off conversations all the way through. They are people who specifically helped me with a problem ten years ago and we’ve kept in touch.
How else can career women improve their approach to networking.
To improve networking skills, we have to change our psyche. I don’t like ‘wine and cheese’ nights because they’re not effective. We don’t have to be best friends or warm and fuzzy or, “You have to see me every three months.” It’s none of that. It can be so transactional and involve very little time, but it’s making sure your network is as diverse as possible.
What can women poised for leadership add to their skillset to enhance their career prospects?
If you have a fear of public speaking, put yourself out there and get an opportunity to present to a group of people. Try and find some public speaking experience, whether it be going back to university and presenting there or finding some community function where you can start adding value. It may be in your job: you take on a role working with a team outside your current discipline. It may be not-for-profit.
Resilience is a really big factor. Take away the excuses for not pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. “Everyone is too busy and I’ve got my priorities over here and my boss wouldn’t want me to do that.” Remove those barriers so that you can stretch yourself.
What other qualities do women need most at the C-suite level?
Good decision-making. That’s the crux of leadership. You need to use a little bit of both intuition and information. Your intuition because it allows you to be more agile in decision-making, but equally you need to be open to the information at hand and quite aggressive about trying to get that information quickly.
What else do you think emerging female leaders need to continually work on?
Female leaders need to have the courage to confront their own unconscious bias. Recognise the limitations of your style of leadership and of your team. Being able to listen to that feedback and address it in some way requires awareness, courage and strength of character.
How do you think emerging female leaders can build their confidence?
I trigger when people talk about lack of confidence and capability. I can’t stand this idea that women in the workplace ‘need help’. It makes us sound like we’re victims and someone should come along and help us get up. The reality is we’re really capable. We’re like any other person: we have days when we’re super-confident and days when we’re not, and that’s all okay because we’re human, after all
The same applies to men, so what’s particular to the female experience?
Women and men are all operating in the same business system. The problem is we operate differently in a system that’s been created by men, run by men, and ultimately if we’re to succeed in that system, it has to be changed by men – and that means the male champions leading the change. If you get successful, that helps you be confident, but success generally comes from people encouraging and mentoring you. That could be a woman and it could equally be a man. The system needs to constantly support and reward people.
What else can you share about approaching risk as an asset?
What’s so exciting about our team is the ability to manage risk. You are taking more managed risks and just getting out there. If it doesn’t work, you pull it back quickly, or you tweak it and get it right and go for it again.
We’re almost more vulnerable now because our society is so safe. Can we really face a crisis? Can we really engage with it, fix it, get over it, pick ourselves back up again, get going and be stronger and better than we were before?
The quicker and more adaptable we are, the better able we are to cope.
Finally, what are the top 3 elements you think women need if they want to get where you are?
The journey to a corporate C-suite is very different from a growth business – and I’m not corporate.
So, first, a lot of engagement with an extraordinary team: making sure that everybody is equally supported, but also getting almost daily feedback to make sure you’re getting full alignment, full engagement and full performance.
It’s really important for every team member to be constantly calibrating: what is it we need to achieve? I think the people piece is a really important part of the job.
Second, having courage up front is also really important. I’m convinced no one likes a surprise in business. You’re better off trying to get the information out early so they can manage that for themselves.
Third, resilience: it’s hard work just getting out there. You have bad days, bad weeks and bad months, and you have to trudge through it. You just keep going and going, and that requires resilience.
Women’s Agenda readers can download an exclusive preview of Woman of Influence ahead of the official launch of the book on May 17, 2016. To download your exclusive preview, simply visit here.