Stern Women in Business Conference 2019: Annie Edwards
00:06 – My name is Annie Edwards and I am the Global HR Director for DMGT, which is the Daily Mail. Some people might know it from the Mail Online or Daily Mail but it’s a media and tech portfolio of businesses and my job is to be the Group HR Director. I also spent eight years prior to that at one of the companies owned by DMGT as their Group HR Director and General Counsel.
00:35
The best, this is tough, because you get a lot of career advise along the way but the best career advise I ever received, I actually received it from my mother, who and I’ve heard it again and again from other people, but it is to do what you love. And I know that sounds trite, but what she said to me, which is what I think really resonated was, is if you don’t do what you love, the person next to you is doing what they love.
01:00
And you’ll never be as good as you can be than if you do what you love and I, I give that advise to people in my role in HR all the time because then you can really excel if you’re doing what you love to do. The most effective traits that a leader can have and I’ve worked with some excellent leaders, I would say first and foremost, is knowledge of the business.You know, you don’t have to have it coming into the role, but the leader needs to take the time to understand the business because only then can the leader have sort of genuineness in the way that they lead the company if they understand what’s going on the business.
01:41
Second I would say is decisiveness. At the end of the day, somebody does have to make a decision and the best leaders I’ve worked for do that and then we get to move on. And the third piece for me has been to be genuine but to also be caring. I think in one of the talks earlier someone said be nice.
02:01
I would say be caring, bring a little bit of sense of humor to your job, don’t take yourself too seriously because you need to be able to connect with people, people want to connect with you and at the end of the day, people wanna have a nice day at work. Sure, I think there’s strategies that probably now, it’s only in retrospect that I could suggest these to someone that I sort of experienced through my career of strategies that I would suggest for women who are looking for leadership roles.
02:32
One is to really understand that everyone in the room has self-doubt. Everyone at the table has self-doubt and so never assume that you are not prepared for that role. So raise your hand, sign up, express your interest, give it a try and the worst thing that can happen is someone can say “No, you’re not ready for that role yet.” But when it comes around and they need someone for that role again, they’ll remember, you know she raised her hand.
03:00
She’s interested in doing this. So, so sign up, show up. Another strategy is to make sure that along the way you network. Your networks can be hugely helpful and you can help them and they can help you, but those are usually the people who are sitting at the table when they’re trying to figure out who that next product leader should be or who should be the next CTO. Those are the folks who usually will say “you know what, “I’ve worked with June and I know how she works. “And she could do this role.”
03:29
So make sure that you speak up and you show up and maintain that network. It’s extremely important.
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