Nicole Huesman: It is so wonderful to talk to you today. I am so excited to talk to you about, the work that you're doing that is so really important to all of us. So thank you for being here.

Minette Norman: Thank you for inviting me, Nicole. I'm happy for the conversation with you.

Nicole Huesman: Could you introduce yourself, tell folks just a little bit about you and then where you are in your journey.

Minette Norman: I am Minette Norman. I am based in the San Francisco Bay area. I am an author, a speaker and a leadership consultant. I'm self employed, but I only came to this work recently, really. I left the corporate world in 2019. So before this, I spent 30 years in the software industry in Silicon Valley, and I ultimately left and decided to start my own business, which is what I'm doing now. But everything that I do has been informed by those 30 years in the software industry and 20 of those years in leadership positions.

Nicole Huesman: You made a pivot from acting into technology. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then what was it like to bring a more creative, humanities-based perspective into the tech, the world of tech.

Minette Norman: Yes, my deep dark secret was that I originally planned to be an actor, a professional actor. I majored in drama and French and thought that that's what I would do. But I realized pretty quickly after I got out of school that it's just such a hard life of hearing no and getting rejected all the time. I didn't like going to auditions. 

And so I had to figure out what's my plan B. And it was actually that second major, the French major, that helped me get into tech sort of. What happened was I was living in New York City trying to be an actor. I got a job working for the French Trade Commission and it was when they were introducing PCs and I just started playing around, figuring out what could I do. I had never taken a computer science class, but I was a quick study and I realized, Oh, this is, this is fun. I really like this. A friend of mine said, you know, you should go into tech. You should be a technical writer. You'd be good at explaining, you know, all the technology and clear language. You're a good writer. So that is what brought me into tech. 

It's funny because when I got into tech back in late 89, really early 90s, and I was working at Adobe initially. It was full of creatives. It was full of people that wouldn't necessarily consider themselves techies. Of course, there were the techies and the engineers and the architects and all of that. But there were also a lot of designers and writers and, you know, people who would just font designers, people who would classify themselves as creatives and more on the humanity side than on the tech side.

So it's funny because now, thirty plus years later, it's all STEM STEM STEM. But honestly, from day one, the tech field was was really full of people from different backgrounds. There was a good balance of humanities in tech. And maybe we've gotten a bit away from that today. But back in those early days, it wasn't strange to say, like, oh, this person who was an actor and, you know, a French major is now writing manuals. That wasn't so strange back then. So it's funny, now we really separate the two and we think you're either STEM or you’re humanities and never the two shall meet. And I think that's a false dichotomy because I think so much of those deeply human skills and things we learn in the humanities are absolutely critical and relevant to tech workplaces in all workplaces. And as you know, that's the work I'm doing now, but I don't think we ever didn't need that.

Nicole Huesman: Yeah. Yeah, that's so true that we tend to draw that, you know, hard line between them. What was it like to then transition from that tech world into what you're doing today?

Minette Norman: Well, I would say being your, being my own boss and having my own business is very different because I always worked for a company for, for my whole career. So that part was different. But in some ways, the work that I'm doing, I would say is a continuation of the work that I started doing when I was still in tech, because my last five years, and this is how you and I connected actually was when I was, was VP of engineering at Autodesk.

And I had a very large mandate, and my mandate was, you know, on paper was to transform how we developed software, and I realized, like, yes, it's partially a technology challenge, but more than anything, it's a cultural challenge. It's about human behavior. Human interaction. How do we hear more voices? How do we respect different perspectives? 

I put on this big tech conference every year, internal conference, and I would always give a keynote. And every year I chose to give a keynote, not about the technology my team was really leading, but about, you know, Whether it was empathy or collaboration or diversity and inclusion, because I felt like these are the things that are not being talked about that are absolutely critical to our success and our transformation.

So I started that work and did that work for several years. And then when I felt like I had reached a point where I was no longer able to do great work, then I felt, I'm not done doing this work. I just need to do it in a new context and I need to do it on my terms. And that's why I decided, I'm going to start my own business and I'm going to help leaders create cultures where everyone can do great work, where everyone's voice is welcome and where, you know, you can truly tap into the amazing power of diverse teams through creating an inclusive culture and through really having better leadership.

So that's what brought me to the work that I'm doing and so it doesn't, except for having to be self employed and all the things you learn about that, the work itself doesn't feel that different in some ways.

Nicole Huesman: You've talked about feeling like an outsider, even in positions of leadership that you've held. Can you talk a little bit about that feeling and then the lessons that you learned from that?

Minette Norman: Yes, I do talk a lot about the insider and outsider dynamic, having experienced it myself and, you know, having this, a little bit of a naivete that if I got to that almost highest rank, I wasn't in the C suite, I was one, one level below the C suite, but there I was, I was in an executive role. I had a huge team, I had power, I had privilege, I had all those things. And yet I often felt like I wasn't part of the Insiders Club. Like there was still a club and I was not part of it. 

And the way I felt it was, you know, you'd be in a meeting with my peers and I would feel like my voice isn't really welcome here. Or when I speak up, people ignore me or they roll their eyes ‘cause I'm, you know, offering a different perspective. I just feel like, okay, doesn't matter. I could probably be in the C suite and still be experiencing that. And I realized, this is, this is something so many people are experiencing day to day.

Now, look, I was, I was in this privileged position. I had a lot of influence. And there were people throughout the organization who didn't have the power, the privilege, et cetera. And I saw how they were feeling like outsiders, being silenced, feeling like their voice wasn't welcome, their perspective, their experience was not welcome, and I felt like this is so prevalent. It's not just me, right? You know, sometimes you're the only woman in the room and you feel like, okay, I really am not part of this club, the Boys Club, but it went far beyond that because there were women who were in the Insiders Club and yet I wasn't one of them. 

One of the things that I learned as I was, as I was experiencing it myself, I was also mentoring a lot of people and just reading a lot to try to understand what we're all dealing with here in this complicated world of work. And I, I learned that, of course, this is built in many ways, built into us that there are these, there's this natural affinity bias we have for people like us. And so we're always classifying the world into like us and not like us. And, you know, there's this Insiders Club, and we want people who are just like us in that club, and everyone else is sort of the outsider.

And the people who are feeling left out, this was a fascinating study I read, when you feel like an outsider, you're experiencing pain. Your brain registers pain when you are excluded in exactly the same way it registers physical pain. So I'm realizing that, you know, as I feel kind of not part of the Insiders Club, I'm suffering. Every single day at work, I'm suffering as are many, many of my colleagues, probably my staff members, et cetera. And I feel like when I realized that, it was this aha moment of, it is every leader's job to ensure that people are not experiencing this pain of exclusion at work, and yet it's so common.

Nicole Huesman: I am inspired on a daily basis by the incredibly important work that you're doing to create safe spaces. To ensure that leaders know, know how to incorporate inclusivity into the work that they're doing so that we can all not feel like we're on the outside looking in, but instead feel like we are a core part of [00:14:00] the team and that we're able to contribute to our fullest extent. Can you talk about what it was like to make that decision to to say, I am going to leave this, this tech world and I am going to really explore this meaningful work over here and, and, and see how I can make an impact.

[00:14:49] Minette Norman: You know, I wish it were just as clean as you had, you just described it, like, I'm going to leave and I'm going to do this. And it wasn't nearly that, that seamless. What, what happened really was that I didn't think I was going to leave when I did. I wasn't necessarily planning to leave and I didn't necessarily even want to leave.

But when we had a leadership change in the company, it just became clear that the work I was doing wasn't really valued. My voice wasn't really valued. And when I left, I was in a bad place. Honestly, Nicole, I was, I was feeling very demoralized. I was feeling that maybe all the work that I thought was important work hadn't really had an impact. I was very much doubting myself. 

So I had to go through this period of maybe confidence rebuilding. I felt like I had been, you know, pulled down to the bottom. I was questioning all the impact I'd had over 20 years. And then I, you know, of course I talked to people that I knew, people who cared about me, people who had worked with me and who had seen that I did make a positive impact on many people's working lives.

And I, it started to little by little over the months build my confidence back up. And it was, it was an interesting time because I didn't think I was going to start my own business. I thought, well, maybe I will pair up with someone else who's doing this kind of work. And I was introduced to someone who was starting her own consultancy and she wanted me to join.

And I first thought, Oh, perfect. I don't have to start my own thing. I don't have to deal with all the, you know, bureaucracy, setting up an LLC, all that business. I'm going to go work with this other woman. And I was very far along that path of about to join her little company when she sent me an agreement to sign, a consulting agreement to sign, and she in that there was a paragraph that was like very much at the end that said anything that you create while working with this group is forevermore in perpetuity our intellectual property. So, any course, anything I wrote, would become theirs. And it was this moment where I went, you know, put the brakes on. Heck no. This is not going to happen. This is what I have. I have 30 years of experience. All I have really is my intellectual property to offer. And that is something I should not undervalue. And it was at that moment, I knew if you want to do this work, you're going to have to do it on your own. 

And that was probably close to six months after I left my job. So I basically took half a year to figure out what I was going to do. And even then I was thinking, well, I'm sort of broadly focused on leadership, but then to narrow down, like, what is my, my niche and my niche is really inclusive leadership. And if you click down a level, it's inclusive leadership with a strong foundation of psychological safety. That's where I focus. And so it took me several months to get to that level of clarity.

Nicole Huesman: And what a process. You're so right. It's not. It's not a clean process. It evolves over time.

Minette Norman: Yeah, it definitely does. And I think we get to the level of clarity that we get to, especially like at this phase of my life where, you know, I get to pick what I want to do and I get to see, I mean, that's of course an incredibly privileged position, but I get to decide how I want to spend my time. And so I want to spend my time on my own terms doing work that I think is meaningful and that gets me up excited in the morning.

And so it definitely came through, I would say some, some pain and, you know, suffering and figuring things out. And I think that's how most of us get to these new inflection points. We get through them to whatever that next level is. And at the time, of course, I was feeling kind of bitter and angry about the way my career ended in tech. And yet, honestly, it was such a gift in many ways, because it forced me to do this introspection and figure out what was important to me. 

Nicole Huesman: Like you said, we're incredibly privileged by being able to focus on the work that matters to us most, but it was not through easy times that I arrived where I am as well. 

What role does self-awareness and inner [00:21:00] work play in one's journey to become more inclusive?

[00:21:07] Minette Norman: I think that's the beginning of it all. I really do believe that for leaders to become more inclusive, they have to become more self-aware. And I think the problem is, and you know, I was like this a lot of the time too in leadership, is we just don't even know how we're showing up, right? We obviously all have our biases innate and often unconscious, and we're often acting out those biases day to day until we challenge ourselves and have people challenge us. We don't even know, like, what tone we're setting because we just operate fairly automatically a lot of the time.

And so I think we have to start by paying attention to things like, who am I listening to? And who am I ignoring? And who and what am I rewarding? And what or who am I punishing? What am I tolerating? What am I encouraging? All of these things are moments of self-awareness that we don't often have. And I think that is the starting point, that I have to get much more in touch with how am I showing up in every interaction, whether it’s passing someone in the hallway, whether it's a one-on-one meeting, whether it's a team meeting, whether it's an all-hands, you know, like from small, from one-on-one interactions to how am I showing up in a group? And all of those moments are opportunities to set an inclusive tone and to really be open to different perspectives and different voices and different ways of seeing things, or to go unconsciously and just listen to the people who please us, who agree with us. That's the starting point. 

It's sort of an evolution because once we start to become more aware, self-aware, and we do start to listen, and we, we really listen to, to understand the other person, not to just, you know, refute what they say or to put forth our ideas, then we will be challenged. Because if we start to open ourselves up to different perspectives, then our own thinking, our own proposals will get challenged. And then the next step in our self-awareness is how do we respond when someone says something like, I disagree with you, or, you know, I don't think that that's a good solution.

We naturally get really defensive, and I've done it, and I've been the victim of someone else getting defensive. And it's just exactly, if we, if we operate in that, you know, in that automatic reaction of getting defensive, we often lash out at someone, we often put them down, make them feel bad, and that's exactly how to, you know, ruin the inclusive culture that you've tried to build because people feel like, Ooh, I don't dare speak up now. I'm just going to get shut down or embarrassed or humiliated. 

So the leader in us all, we have to go, Okay, I'm getting defensive. Take a pause. Take a breath. Don't respond in the moment. And, you know, say, Let me have a moment. Let me think about that. Ask a follow-up question, but do not make the other person feel bad because they challenged you.

So that's sort of a process of really getting in touch with how are we showing up? How are we reacting? And then how are we choosing to respond instead of letting that automatic response take over?

[00:24:26] Nicole Huesman: Wow. Yeah. One of the stories that I have read about your experience within a team, if I'm remembering this correctly, where there was one teammate who was very quiet, and when someone is quiet like that, you know, maybe we dismiss them as, Oh, well, they must not have anything to say.

Minette Norman: Exactly.

Nicole Huesman: But if you draw them out, they actually do have quite a bit to say. And I, I, right, I say that because I'm thinking, Okay, well, I tend to speak up in groups. But what about the other folks on the team who really don't, and they're more quiet, and do we automatically assume that they don't have anything to say?

Minette Norman: Yeah, and I do I have a couple of stories in my book about that because it was really eye-opening for me as a leader to get to know those quiet people on my staff and realize, okay, one of them is the most creative innovative people on this team and I didn't know that until, you know, it took me months of really getting to know him one-on-one and realizing, well, his style, his processing style is really different. 

We kind of tend to reward the loudest voices in the room, generally. The extroverts. The people who think very quickly on their feet. But they aren't necessarily the ones with the best ideas. And this was luckily, I was really lucky because I met this person fairly early in my leadership journey. And, he, he opened my eyes to realize, okay, there's not one-size-fits-all to, like, how do you run a meeting? How do you bring out all the voices? Like, how do you get the quiet people to contribute? And so it was, it was sort of iterative for me to learn that. And then when I realized, like, how much he had to contribute, I realized we have to do things very differently because I am definitely biasing towards the, the people who are speaking up and I'm, and that's not okay, right? And so it was, it was a big learning moment for me.

Nicole Huesman: So as, as workplaces evolve, have you seen the concept of inclusive leadership also evolving? How do we continue to foster inclusive environments and inclusive leadership, even as we're now in a remote world?

Minette Norman: I think that the organizations that have everyone remote have done a fairly good job because many of them have always been remote or they've just been remote first and they have figured out, okay, we need to get to know one another in a different way because we're not co-located and they maybe have, maybe they're farther ahead than the companies that suddenly had to figure out during the pandemic, what are we going to do now? We've always been in person or we've certainly mostly been in person. And I think those are the organizations that are having a harder time because especially when they bring some people back to a physical co-located workspace, and they have some people who are still remote, then there's a little bit the us-and-them again of like, if you are in a room together, you're having a better experience and maybe a more social and inclusive experience. And then if you're on Zoom or teams or whatever it is, you're that, you know, you're in the second tier. So how can we deliberately make sure everyone feels that they have an equal chance to speak, an equal seat at the table?

That's where I think, honestly, I'm a big proponent of technology to help us foster more inclusion because what I've seen and I saw this when I was in tech and I see it in my interactions facilitating things with other teams is that, when you're using a virtual environment like Zoom or teams or any of them, you get, you have the opportunity to bring out the quieter voices in a different way. 

Now, it doesn't mean everyone's gonna unmute themselves, but you have great tools like online whiteboards. Online whiteboards are a great way to have people put down their ideas on, you know, virtual sticky notes and put them on the virtual whiteboard. You will find that the quieter people are usually willing to do that if you give them some silent time to reflect. And you've probably also noticed that sometimes there are people who are willing to use the chat feature, but they aren't willing to unmute themselves.

So I think if we really take advantage of all these modalities, we can create an inclusive, a much more inclusive environment than one where everyone's in the room and the loudest voice wins kind of thing. But we have to be very deliberate about how we do it. 

And also careful in some ways, because, you know, one caveat I will say is, when you're doing an online meeting, it's really tempting to have, like, three meetings going on at once. It's the people in the room together. It's the people who are actually speaking on Zoom. And then it's the people who are having a chat conversation. And if you're not careful about it, they can be three separate things. So you have to say, like, you know, maybe we're going to have a silent moment where we're just going to use the chat and no one's going to speak. Or we're going to have a reflection moment for two minutes where everyone writes down their ideas and puts them on a virtual whiteboard. These are the kinds of ways I've seen to be very inclusive to everyone, depending, you know, regardless of whether they're in person or remote. 

And I guess the last thing I will say is that I don't think we can underestimate the need, especially in a virtual environment to have social time because, you know, people are, we're, we're a social species. We need to have interactions with people and it can't all be about work. And so I think we need to build into our virtual meetings time to just get to know one another, time to talk about what's going on besides the work at hand, so that we know each other as human beings and not just as coworkers.

Nicole Huesman: Yeah. And that is so important because we no longer have the hallway conversations necessarily. I love how you've brought in the different modalities of tech and how they can actually foster a more inclusive environment. They're good to [00:33:00] think about as tools that we can use.

Minette Norman: Yeah, and they're they're usually they're fairly easy. There's there's very little lift. And you know, it's really funny. I gave a workshop recently, and I used a tool called Slido. It's like, you know, there are these tools like Mentimeter, Slido, where you can do all sorts of fun interactions with a big crowd. Like I had over 100 people on this, this meeting, and I asked them to respond to a couple of questions by typing in a word or two. And so you generate these incredible word clouds, right? And you're basically crowdsourcing all of this, this great knowledge from the group. 

And afterwards, you know, I asked people for their takeaways and a lot of them were leaders themselves. And they said, my biggest takeaway is that I'm going to use Slido afterwards because they just realized the power of just collecting ideas in such a quick way. And, like, no one's put on the spot because it's all anonymous, but, but you're really hearing from a large group in a, in a very efficient way.

These tools are terrific if we use them well. So I think let's, let's take advantage of them and not, let's not try to say we have to be in a room to have a great interaction. We don't.

Nicole Huesman: So true. What do you think are maybe some of the misperceptions about or misconceptions about inclusive leadership?

Minette Norman: People shy away from it a lot because they think it means relearning everything that they do day to day and that, you know, everything they're doing today is wrong and it's going to take so much time and it's going to be something on top of my day job and I don't have time for this.

And that's the, that's the first myth that I always want to dispel is that, look, inclusive leadership, let's just take out the word inclusive and say, this is good leadership. This is great leadership. This is human leadership. This is how to lead if you want to bring out the best in your team. Doesn't everyone want to do that? Don't you want to have high performing teams, highly engaged teams, innovative teams? That's what you need to do. 

And so that's like the first thing is like, you don't need to unlearn everything. But what you do need is really to become more aware of your behavior every day and to make small changes that can have a very large, positive impact. So, how about if we try something new this week, next week, and we just keep iterating so that we can improve the culture and, and, and be more inclusive as leaders, but not have to throw everything out that we're doing already. So I think maybe that's the, that's the biggest myth. 

And then I guess the other one that a lot of people misunderstand about DEI in general is that, if I just hire a diverse team, I get inclusion. And that's also a big myth because what we do know from the research is that yes, diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams, especially on challenging and [00:36:00] innovative issues. But they only outperform homogeneous teams if we focus on inclusion. 

And that doesn't happen automatically because, actually, when you have a diverse team of people coming together, it's harder initially because, as I said, we have this affinity bias. We like being with people just like us. So we feel some discomfort initially with having a team that isn't all just like us. So we have to, I keep using the word deliberate, we have to consciously create an environment where we celebrate our differences. We don't have to conform. We don't have to all look alike or think alike. And we have to make sure that everyone in this group feels that they have an equal seat at the table, that their voice is welcome, their voice is listened to, their voice is respected. And then we can reap the benefits of having a diverse team. So that's the other myth is that, well, we'll just focus on, you know, diverse hiring, and then we'll, we'll have solved everything. I actually think you have to focus on your culture first, because people will know once they go through the interview process, or even their first day at work, whether this is really an inclusive environment where I want to be. So I think that that's the other thing is that we have to maybe have to reverse that.

Nicole Huesman: You're involved in so many different or have been involved in so many different initiatives over the years, whether volunteering at food banks or driving seniors and delivering meals, different programs. And I wonder, there's this intersection, I think, between the personal and the professional Minette, right? And that I think is just beautiful. How do you see that intersection between your personal values and your professional mission in promoting inclusivity and equity?

Minette Norman: That's such a lovely question. I guess the intersection for me is that, you know, I believe that we all have to take care of one another on this planet. And when you have certain privileges, then it is really incumbent upon you to give back in whatever ways you can. And so, I've always done volunteer work, and I think that comes from my, even from my parents. My parents were always involved in community and volunteering. And I guess that was just part of my ethos growing up, that we give back.

So I think how that translates into my career and my work is that, as I was rising up through, you know, first level manager, senior manager, director, senior director, VP, with each of those steps along the way, I felt like it's really important for me to give back because I am, I am gaining, you know, power and privilege and all the advantages you get by walking, by going up the corporate ladder. And I want to bring people along with me. I want to lift people up. I am not the, you know, there's that myth of the queen bee. There can only be one of us. There needs to be a lot of us. There needs to be as many of us as possible. So I want to give back. 

And so, the way I really brought this to the workplace, this sort of volunteer spirit of helping others as, as, as I do well was to be a mentor and a sponsor and an ally internally. I did a ton of mentorship and I felt like that's how I gave back within the organization. I mentioned, I don't know how many dozens of people I mentored over the decades and then moved into sponsorship for some of them where I really helped them get to their new position or new career. And then really being, you know, one of the, being an ally. I think one of the things we can all do is help be a voice for people who don't have a voice, who are feeling silenced. 

When I left my job, my staff members, they basically crowdsourced an award for me. And they called it The Voice of the Underheard because they said that I, basically, was always there to speak up for anyone who didn't have a voice. And I feel like that's my job in, in my personal life and in my professional life and to help others and to help lift up others. And, you know, not to be a savior, but to really like, help provide a path for people to, to do their best and to, to rise as much as they want to. And so I continue to do, not only my professional work, but I continue to do volunteer work. I'm still driving and doing errands for seniors. And my husband and I used to be volunteer ESL teachers.

And the other day we were cleaning out a drawer and we found a thank you card from one of our groups of students. And we looked at each other and said, Should we do that again? So I think we're going to go back and start doing that again too, because it was really meaningful work.

Nicole Huesman: Oh, how wonderful. What has been the inspiration that has driven you through all of these different experiences?

Minette Norman: I was inspired to do this work by seeing a lot of bad examples and also by knowing that there is a different way. I witnessed it in small moments. I know that when I was at my best as a leader, when I was self-aware, and when I was open-minded, and I really listened to everyone, that's when we could create amazing team dynamics. I've been part of amazing teams. So I know it's possible. 

Early in my career before I was even a manager, I worked with this team. I was at another tech company in the valley. We had this, this cross-functional team. That was one of the most magical teams I've ever been a part of. It was a group of people who did not think alike. We all had our own domains of expertise. We [00:45:00] argued a lot, but every voice was heard. We really liked each other. We had each other's back. We laughed a lot. We created the best product that that division had ever created. And I realized early in my career, this is possible. 

And so I'm inspired to keep trying to create team environments like that, where everyone can just thrive and do great work together and create something that is bigger than the sum of the parts. That inspired me early in my career, and I kept trying to recreate that in different ways.

Nicole Huesman: You know, when, when you came out with your psychological safety book, it, it, that's absolutely what I did is to think back to those, those times. And I thought that was one of the key elements that made it so. Was that you weren't afraid to speak up, you knew that everybody, like you said, all of your teammates had your back.

Minette Norman: Yeah, yeah, and that is really the, that is the essence, and you know, I don't know if you know the whole study that Google did, Project Aristotle, that's quite famous, where they, they did this big research project back starting in 2012, to try to figure out what makes the most effective high performing teams, and they spent years, and they studied like 200 teams, and they finally, it took them a really long time to uncover that what it was, was psychological safety, and everything else was secondary because that was the foundation that was required for everything else to happen. And so, yeah, that is, that is exactly what I, I feel like we have to stress before everything else and then you can build on it.

Nicole Huesman: Absolutely. Wow. So, Minette, how do you define success in your own world?

Minette Norman: That's such a, that's a loaded question in many ways because I was just writing about this the other day, you know, now that I'm an author of two books. One way I think about success is, is my book, are my books selling? And that is such an up-and-down process because book sales are hard and, you know, it's, you cannot, I cannot tie my success to that. 

To me, success – and I really have to do some self-talk on this sometimes – to me, success is knowing that my work, whether it's my books or my consulting or my speaking, is having a positive impact somewhere, on some individual, and ideally, on some organization or team. And I know that it is because I hear that from the people I do work with. And I hear from people I don't know who, like today, I found a post on LinkedIn of someone who said, I just read The Boldly Inclusive Leader. What an incredible book. It was a CEO in the, I think, in the biotech industry. Someone I didn't know. Like, okay, that's success. A stranger posts about my book. That's success. Someone says, you know, this, this is a true story. I'm working with a team over the course of this year. And someone said, you know, I tried out one of the things that you recommended and it has been game-changing for my team dynamics in such a positive way. That's success to me.

Nicole Huesman: Yep. Absolutely. And I, and I saw your post about this and absolutely like, yes, because the numbers, I think, are the vanity metrics.

Minette Norman: They are, they are.

Nicole Huesman: Right? They're, they're, I so agree with you. It's, it's that impact that, yeah, that heartfelt deep impact of, of your work. Wow. 

So what, what advice or what guidance would you have for other aspiring women, either starting careers, switching paths, striving to make an impact?

Minette Norman: Hmm. Work life can be lonely when you feel like, you know, you're trying to figure out where to go next, what to do, decisions to make. And I think one of the best things I ever did was I always had trusted friends and colleagues and people that you can use as a sounding board. Surround yourself with people who care about you, who believe in you, who are going to give you the pep talk when you're having a bad day. You need those people around you because there will be, there will be hard moments. There will be great moments. And you want to just have someone that you can speak to.

And then, remember that your voice matters and it deserves to be heard and you've got to find an environment where you can speak up and share what incredible insights you have to share with the world. And if you're in an environment where you can't do that, then, you know, what are you, what are you going to do to find someplace else where you can be appreciated and heard? And I know there are times when we have to stay in jobs because we don't have an option, right? We have to pay the bills, whatever it is. But just in the long term, you know that you want to be in an environment where you can really thrive and do your best. And so, strive to find those environments and sometimes you find those because of your network of the people that you know and who care about you who say, Nicole, this would be a great place for you to be, or Nicole, stay away from there, it's not really a great place. So I think the more we have these trusted advisors and friends and colleagues and confidants, the better off we're all going to be. Don't try to do it alone.

Nicole Huesman: So true. So true.

Nicole Huesman: So, Minette, as we close, what does She Lights the Way mean to you?

Minette Norman: I absolutely love that. What it means to me is that she and all of the, all of the women in the world really do bring light to the world and that we, we have lights that are, that need to be shown brightly and that we, we don't want to dim our lights that we have to be out there in our full power with everything we have to offer.

And we, we will lead and light the way to a much brighter future for this world. And it's, it's about the work world, but it's also about the larger world. And so to me, it's about shining brightly and, you know, casting out the darkness.

Nicole Huesman: Well, you and your work certainly shine brightly for me. Thank you so, so much for being here.

Minette Norman: Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I've enjoyed every minute of it.