Some high powered and overall fabulous girl bosses talked at a panel aboard the Samsung Yacht in Cannes this week about vulnerability, imposter syndrome and being kind to your staff.
(Main image from left to right: Sally Henderson, Amanda DeVita, Cathy Oh and Natalie Gabathuler-Scully)
Sally Henderson, leadership mentor, moderated the panel with a sharp and refreshing set of questions, with little jargon and a lot of authentic conversation. She also started with a dig at another leadership mentor, Simon Sinek, and who doesn’t like seeing leadership mentors rubbish each other?
First of all, I do not agree with Simon Sinek that leaders eat last. What rubbish! You eat first, you eat bloody first. Because if you’re not able to look after yourself, you’ve got nothing to give to anyone else. Are you looking after you? A lot of the clients I start to work with say everything’s amazing, then open the door and they are on their knees.
Henderson then asked her fellow panellist Amanda DeVita CMO Butler/Till, has impostor syndrome affected her in her career? If so, what was the impact of this? And how has she overcome it?
“So I nailed impostor syndrome right out of the gate, because I didn’t come out until 2022. So you talk about feeling like a fraud, I lived an experience and a life trying to be straight and trying to fit into what I thought I was supposed to be. And that creeped into a lot of my early career. So when I came out, and by the way, for any of you that are in the alphabet mafia, like myself, the LGBTQIA plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, you come out all the time, you’re constantly continuing to come out,” DeVita told the audience.
“The second one was when I was in Tech. I was one of the first women in a tech environment. And I would be in these huge rooms, and just had this deep fear that I do not belong here. Because no one really looked like me. And then at 45, I went back to school to get my MBA, and I thought, Oh, shit, I don’t know if I belong here either!”
Henderson then asked Natalie Gabathuler-Scully EVP of Revenue, Distribution and Data Operations, Vevo what advice she would give her younger self to overcome impostor syndrome? And perhaps more importantly, how would she get her younger self to listen?
“Beat myself over the head?” Gabathuler-Scully quipped. “Seriously, I would tell her to feel the anxiety, you’re going to feel it all the time, you’re going have the doubt. But, you have to look at the reactions that you’re getting from your peers, the respect that you get from them. The accolades that you do, the promotions that you get from your bosses, all of that are large indicators that you deserve to be where you are.”
Henderson then turned her attention to Cathy Oh, Vice President Global head of Marketing, Samsung Ads. “What’s the best example when you’ve seen a fellow senior leader demonstrate
“So in my career, I’ve had many good bosses, managers and leaders to look up to, and I have also had really bad ones. Haven’t we all? I bring that up, because you can learn a lot from those who you don’t want to resemble.
“I think being human is really important. It’s a lot easier said than done. I think the leaders who actually take the time to get to know, to understand your motivations, your aspirations, but also, where do you think that you would like to learn more? I’ve been at Samsung now for eight years and I think the culture and the people is really what’s so special. It is a culture where they applaud one another. Leaders will write thank you notes. So I think applauding and promoting one another was really important.”
