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You’ve Got a Lot of Nerve! A Discussion with Women Who Went First With Two University Presidents

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Forging new territory is always hard. Forging it as a leader is even harder: your team, stakeholders, and critics are all watching you.

Now, imagine you are in new territory! For women entering the still-heavily male-dominated C-suite ranks, scrutiny and pressure are extra intense. Any stumble prompts mutterings of “What do you expect with a woman?”

Dr. Martha Piper, the first female president of the University of British Columbia, and Dr. Indira Samarasekera, the first female president and former vice-chancellor of the University of Alberta, share their experience on the podcast It Takes Nerve. This episode was produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association as part of their 25th Annual Global Conference held in October 2023. Dan Mushalko, ILI Executive Producer, shared this article as a companion to the podcast. 

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

You’ve Got a Lot of Nerve! (And That’s a Good Thing)

Our guests in this week’s podcast heard that kind of feedback. Martha Piper (University of British Columbia) and Indira Samarasekera (University of Alberta) learned to navigate such resistance and obstacles as the first female presidents of their respective universities. Those lessons can benefit all innovative leaders!

The Key:

It takes nerve, grit, and grace.

Nerve and Grit

These are two sides of the same coin, whose currency is determination. We all face obstacles, especially when we try to make an impact. When those setbacks happen, focusing even more sharply on your goal is important. It’s all too easy to be blinded by the emotions of the situation, but remembering the importance of your goal helps you see that your work is bigger than you. That can energize you to move forward. Staying on target despite disruptions, simple stumbles, or outright attacks is nerve in action. Your authenticity, courage, resilience, and personal experience all help fuel your innate grit. And the more you exercise your grit, the stronger it becomes.

Grace

There’s a myth that grit and grace are mutually exclusive – that graceful leadership is synonymous with weakness. That myth arose from outdated machismo in the executive gym. In reality, losing your temper is far easier than to muster the strength to maintain grace under fire. The ability to retain your internal balance: to express gratitude to your team, to see the opportunities in apparent failures, and to forgive; all these elements of grace create loyalty, authenticity, and true problem-solving. In short, grace makes your leadership stronger.

Upholding Principles

Here’s where utilizing your nerve and grit comes into play at each leadership level. When you’re in the spotlight, the temptation to cave under external pressures can be substantial. But truly effective leaders don’t lose sight of their values; that’s a significant factor in their long-term success. Hold on to your principles, filtering your decisions through that lens. Whether you bend to external pressure or not, you’ll face criticism and backlash – so you might as well stay true to your principles regardless. When your team sees this, it has the added benefit of boosting your authenticity and enhancing their trust.

Doctors Samarasekera and Piper delve into more detail in this week’s podcast, and add many examples from their own lives in their new book Nerve: Two Women Who Went First.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Trailblazing Chief Justice Reveals Her Surprising Path to the Top

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Maureen Metcalf, CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, shared this article as a companion to her podcast with Beverley McLachlin, the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Leading the Court: Canada’s First Female Chief Justice. This episode was produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association as part of their 25th Annual Global Conference held in October 2023. 

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

What does it take to rise from humble beginnings to the highest judicial office in Canada? For trailblazer Beverley McLachlin, the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the journey was filled with unexpected turns guided by insightful mentors.

“I never dreamed of being a lawyer, much less a judge,” McLachlin remarks. Yet this small-town Alberta native ascended to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada — and became a quiet leader along the way.

Her story holds invaluable lessons for anyone aspiring to lead, whether or not the law is your calling.

McLachlin credits her unquenchable curiosity to understand the world as a skill that helped her as a judge. An early love of philosophy led her to ponder teaching, but something didn’t feel quite right. At her fiancé’s suggestion, she took a chance at law school and found her life’s passion.

Though the legal profession was dominated by men at the time, she persevered thanks to mentors who nurtured her talent and gave her a fair shot. Once appointed to the bench in her 30s, she rapidly rose through the courts.

For McLachlin, leadership isn’t about raw speeches or rhetoric. “It may be quiet leadership,” she explains. “What is it? Well, I think it’s the leadership of ideas and decision-making.”

Crafting sound rulings means deeply considering all sides of complex issues — and having the courage to take principled if unpopular stances. She’s proud of helping expand equality rights and shape new Indigenous legal frameworks during reconciliation efforts.

Vital qualities for judges also apply to leaders everywhere: seeking out different views humbly and openly before making decisions. “You have to have this ability to look at different aspects and perspectives and weigh them up,” McLachlin advises.

By sharing the inside story of her barrier-breaking legal career, McLachlin provides wisdom from a unique vantage point for anyone aspiring to lead — or make difficult decisions soundly.

McLachlin’s key insights on effective leadership elements as learned through a career in the law:

Curiosity. McLachlin’s natural curiosity and hunger to learn drove her to study philosophy in college, use that analytical thinking, and apply it to real-world situations in her law career. Stagnant thinking and a lack of interest in learning will defeat a leader before they even begin! By being continuously curious, leaders can set themselves apart as just and fair, willing to constantly take in new information (even when it may compete with their own assumptions).

Considering diverse perspectives. As a judge, McLachlin had to consider both sides of every case before her court. This means that she had to listen carefully and respectfully to each party. Like a judge, leaders must remember that every person on their team comes with their perceptions and perspectives. Though those perceptions may not always be productive, it is essential to understand them to improve your organization.

Leaving one’s preconceptions at the door. Leaders need to be able to identify their own biases and separate them from their decision-making process. Biases often lead to decisions that are ill-informed and exclusionary. Remember that to know our biases, we have to have humility and be willing to analyze ourselves.

Courage. Leaders must have the courage to follow their convictions and make unpopular decisions. Rarely will a decision ever please every party. In the case of the courts, judges are tasked with making decisions based on the law and the information they are given. Similarly, leaders have to work within certain parameters and with the knowledge they have. A key component of an innovative leader is understanding that leaders must have the courage to make a fair and just decision with the parameters they are given and the knowledge they have at the time of the decision. This also means having the courage to admit that your decision may need to change when you have more information.

Which leadership insight from McLachlin resonates most with you?

 

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Beverley McLachlin was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 2000 to 2017. She is the first woman to hold that position, and the longest-serving Chief Justice in Canadian history. In 2018, McLachlin became a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest honour within the Order. She is also the #1 bestselling author of two novels, Full Disclosure and Denial, and a memoir, Truth Be Told, which won the prestigious Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the Ottawa Book Award for Nonfiction.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Women are Problem Solvers! Investing in Them is the Key to Inclusive Growth.

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Pauline Koelbl, AfriProspect GmbH’s Founder and CEO and ShEquity’s Founder and Managing Partner there’s this article as a companion to her podcast ShEquity: A Refugee’s Path to Empowering Women & Their Businesses. This conversation is part of the International Leadership Association Series. 

Closing the gender gap can add $12 trillion to global growth. In Africa, there is a $42 billion gender funding gap that could add roughly $316 billion to Africa’s combined GDP if bridged. But economics is only half the story.

Globally, women are not fully included in economic activities and female entrepreneurs continue to receive less funding than their male counterparts. COVID19 has exacerbated the existing inequity despite the fact that women have been at the frontlines of addressing different challenges linked to the pandemic.  According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth. Thus, closing the existing gender gap is not a charity but a smart thing to do!

Accessing funding is even harder for dark and brown-looking women. In Africa, there is a $42 billion gender funding gap that could add roughly $316 billion to Africa’s combined GDP if bridged.  This, despite the fact that Africa has the highest number of female entrepreneurs globally, and 40% of Small and Medium Businesses (SMEs) are led and owned by women. I established ShEquity to address the existing gender funding gap in Africa by providing smart investment to African female founders who are creating impactful, innovative and scalable solutions to many challenges faced by many Africans.

The challenges that African female founders face are widespread and in many ways endemic, but when we discover innovative solutions that many female entrepreneurs are creating, we unearth new ways of accelerating the achievement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and catalyzing inclusive economic growth.

The most enduring hurdle for African female entrepreneurs is financing. The scale of the gender financing gap for Africa’s early-stage ventures is nothing short of breathtaking, as indicated by the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab. It produces rigorous research on what works and what does not work for women’s economic empowerment, and its analysis shows that between 2013 and 2021, only three percent (3%) of start-up funding on the African continent went to all-female founding teams. This gap is not improving: the Big Deal Substack reports that only 0.95% of the funding raised by African startups in 2021 went to startups founded or led by a woman or female-only team, compared to 82% for male counterparts.

If we drill down, there are complex issues at play here, including the fact that there are very few African female Fund Managers and gender-lens Funds as well as the differences in how men and women think about their enterprise financing. Female founders are less likely to pitch for equity investments but are more likely to apply for bank loans. Often, they are also unable to access loans due to the existing collateral biases. This points to the reality that the world of Venture Capital (VC) and Private Equity (PE) is male-dominated and geared towards male entrepreneurs and self-confidence issues.

Being a female-led gender-lens investor, ShEquity brings diversity to the world of investors. Additionally, the matter of self-confidence is addressed head-on at ShEquity. We very pointedly offer more than just financing – we combine cash investment with technical support, and access to high-value networks. We are unapologetic in stepping up and giving the women we work with this kind of practical and operational support – because where inequity exists, action is needed.

But it is not only for the benefit of the woman entrepreneur. Since we launched in 2020, we have already built a strong pipeline of de-risked deals, which allows investors to have access to the fertile African startup market. Investors want to know that the start-ups they entrust their money with are gearing up for success, which is why at ShEquity, we created an accelerator called SHEBA (ShEquity Business Accelerator). SHEBA serves as a Technical Assistance (TA) facility, providing pre-investment support, including a 16-week acceleration program focusing on de-risking qualifying businesses as well as post-investment value addition focusing on the development of growth strategies, networking, and soft skills including leadership.  Our ecosystem strategy allows our investors to have a multifarious return: fiscal, social, and environmental.

The social impact also has multiplier effects, touching upon the lives of so many people in so many ways. When leveraged together, two of the SDGs – gender equality and climate action – can impact nearly all the other SDGs, such as eliminating hunger and ensuring health and well-being. Together, gender and climate alone can unlock opportunities across societal goals. I have seen first-hand how, by leveraging the talents, skills and innovation of female entrepreneurs, we can bring needed actions to global challenges such as climate change and SDG priorities like equitable access to healthcare and food security.

 

At ShEquity, our investees address a vast array of environmental, social and economic issues. Examples include Ecodudu, a circular economy company feeding the future with insect-based protein, and a bus ride-sharing platform called Shuttlers, which sets out to reduce car use and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Widenergy is dedicated to the last-mile distribution of clean, reliable, and affordable energy solutions. It sets out to realize a world where every African woman and girl has access to clean, affordable and sustainable energy for better life chances, health, education and household income.

This all amounts to the creation of a gender-lens investment model – a brand new ecosystem that provides much-needed support to early-stage female-led and owned businesses. Crucially, it is an approach that reassures potential investors that they are investing in de-risked, scalable and impactful companies. Such companies have the capacity to generate a triple-bottom-line return while addressing different challenges, creating decent jobs and contributing to meeting the SDGs. In the end, ShEquity’s ultimate goal is to be ‘Doing Well While Doing Good’ – and we are proud to bring so many investors with us on such a crucial journey.

 

About the Author

Pauline Koelbl is AfriProspect GmbH’s Founder and CEO as well as ShEquity’s Founder and Managing Partner, Pauline is a leading innovation expert in developing & emerging economies, impact investor and seasoned impact-driven team leader with over 20 years experience in international affairs and venture philanthropy.

AfriProspect focuses on connecting African innovators with global markets, and ShEquity provides smart investment to impactful and scalable African female-led and owned businesses. Pauline also has 10+ years’ experience catalyzing innovation and entrepreneurship across Africa and her passion lies in innovation, entrepreneurship, youth, and women’s economic empowerment.

A double Fulbright -Scholar and Fellow-, Pauline is currently serving on a variety of Boards of companies/organizations connected to business, entrepreneurship and innovation in Africa. Pauline holds an Executive Education in Innovation for Economic Development from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government; a Master’s Degree (MA) in Poverty and Development, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in International Studies (Honors) from the University of Arizona (UoA), USA.

You can reach Pauline at p.koelbl@shequity.com

Kim Campbell – Perspectives from a Prime Minister: Reimagining Our Leadership To Become Good Ancestors

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Maureen Metcalf features takeaways from her interview with former Prime Minister of Canada, Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell in this article that accompanies the podcast Reimagining Our Leadership to be a Good Ancestor. This podcast is part of the International Leadership Association’s live interview series recorded in Geneva.

 

A 3-minute clip with the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell

Full Interview with the Rt. Honorable Kim Campbell

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I was honored to interview the Right Honorable Kim Campbell in Geneva in October 2021 at the International Leadership Association Conference.

I want to start this post with a quote from our conversation that stood out to me:

“I have to be encouraged at the capacity of human beings to be wonderful. To be brave. To be imaginative. To be generous. To be kind…” – Kim Campbell

This conversation was a spirited exchange about what is working and not and the solid invitation to do better now so we create the future we want to leave for those who will bear the consequence of our actions. The following blog captures several ideas we discussed and reflects her perspectives.

We started with the topic of leading as an ancestor. It’s a concept our ancestors bequeathed to us. But, unfortunately, we may well be the ancestors that screw it all up for future generations. For example, climate change, the rise in authoritarianism, and threats to democracy are all tied together and impact the ability of future generations to flourish and achieve their potential. Kim’s quote was, “We will never have a more fair and just future until we have a more fair and just history.”

Many of the problems facing society now are grounded in ignorance. Many people don’t like narratives that challenge our position. In many cases, if a person or group isn’t prototypical (women, minority, disabled, etc.), their stories fall off the radar screen. As an example, let’s look at women. At least 60 have been presidents, prime ministers, etc., yet few people know. It is difficult for even the best to advance in their careers, /research, /and other areas. Yet many made foundational contributions to science. So what knowledge did we lose from the women who didn’t have that neighbor, or that person giving them a way onto the path? When we don’t see them on our radar, ignorance says they shouldn’t be there. They haven’t earned the right because they “don’t do that sort of thing.” Yet, typically, they’ve contributed to their field, but it’s unacknowledged or uncredited. This ignorance leads to a personal worldview that’s exclusionary. How much we’ve forgotten about Islam’s contributions to math, science, medicine, architecture – including our sheer numbers! These contributions have been undervalued because of the rise of European (Eurocentric) empires and the regression of Islamic culture resulting from religious fundamentalism.

Ignorance lets us feel superiority, hatred, disdain. It’s never a smooth ride for women. Women are the canaries in the mine when it comes to people wanting to erode liberties. Maybe things have to be disastrous to consolidate the will of good people. We can’t be complacent because it doesn’t always work out if people do nothing.

One difference now vs. the past: we’re now looking at issues where the impact on future generations is knowable, significant, and very real. Greta Thunberg: You are stealing my future and not dealing with this. , be turning their heads and saying, “Nah, can’t deal with it?”

The perversions wrought by ignorance are dangerous. They put lives at risk and undermine evidence-based decision-making. We, as leaders, can’t solve real problems with uninformed conspiracy theories. 700,000 Americans alone have died of Covid; that’s unconscionable by any measure, but the inevitable result of so many people (both leaders and rank-and-file Americans) don’t believe the science. Much ignorance results from disinformation, which is increased by social media.

Thoughts on the “Me Too” movement. Sexual harassment is still much more prevalent than many people realize. It’s not just that many men think that women’s bodies are the spoils of power (which has been the case for a long time – see the opening of The Odyssey, for example). Also, when women pushed back on sexual advances, the men sought to destroy them. This pressure still exists today –vindictiveness to destroy a woman’s career. It’s all about power: companies to pursue business irrespective of the effect on climate, politicians to destroy democratic norms, to control other people’s bodies.

With all of the discussion of the challenges, there is also hope. For example, it isn’t true that older people are less interested in climate change. Boomers are prepared to do more to deal with the issue. We can use our brains, imagination, and strength to improve lives & make the world a better place.

Podcasts may be one answer to address ignorance. They can be more civil, informative, and heard in the listeners’ time. But how do you get someone to listen, especially if it offers a different point of view? One of the values of some podcasts is they can provide a deeper exploration of specific topics as the time isn’t limited by the short form conversations in many other media outlets.

Women in politics are gaining traction. Women are not viewed the same as men – they are under more of a microscope. This view is improving slowly, but it is improving. Angela Merkel was tremendously successful in Germany. She doesn’t fit the stereotype of a powerful woman: she wears glasses, no skirts, a wide variety of colors in her jackets, etc. She has been so successful and long-running that she’s re-written expectations of a political leader.

I sincerely appreciate the Right Honorable Kim Campbell taking an hour to talk about what she is thinking and exploring and what she invites each of us to consider. I was left with the questions:

How can I be a better ancestor for future generations? How can my choices leave the world and the world of work a better place? What resonated with you from her conversation?

Books to look out for Time and Chance: The Political Memoirs of Canada’s First Woman Prime Minister

About the Author

Maureen Metcalf, the CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, is dedicated to elevating the quality of leaders globally.