Rhona Bradshaw

I'm quite a pragmatic person, and I've always loved to stay learning and constantly be disrupted in my own ability to have an impact. I've had some great people help point me in the right direction, offer me advice, and connect me with good people. Fundamentally, I'm a glass-half-full person. I believe that everything is possible, I believe that change is necessary, and I believe that if we can really figure out how to harness technology and combine it with customer insights and changing behaviors, there's an amazing opportunity out there for us to really have some great impact, both personally and professionally when it comes to customer engagement and really driving long-term value for businesses. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning - I love the engagement and challenge. I've just been very lucky to have been involved in telecoms and cable industry for such a long time, where innovation has always been rampant, and the need for change and disruption has been really critical to making sure we keep moving forward, and I like to be able to harness that and bring it now to bear as part of my advisory roles.

Remember who you are. Authenticity is ultimately the most important tool in your box. Especially as a leader, people have to trust that you are clear on the direction that you're headed in and that you're leading them in. I think you also have to be able to showcase empathy and to be able to help them through challenging times. Resiliency isn't necessarily always something that people have inherently, and so being who I am, remaining authentic to myself, and making sure that I continue to be empathetic so that I can continue to learn, but also continue to inspire people is really critical.

I would surround myself with people that know who I am outside of the business that I'm getting into, so that they can offer advice and guidance at different stages along the road. I would count on myself - I would believe in myself much more than certainly I did at the very beginning. You have to really believe what you're capable of, and know that even if feedback comes that isn't necessarily always positive, once you're true to yourself and believe in yourself, progress is always possible. The last thing I'd say is make sure that when you do seek advice, you trust in the individuals that are offering it to you. For a long time, especially females, we were great at asking advice and looking for feedback so we can keep growing and learning, and we strive to always make sure we're staying ahead of the game and stand out from the crowd. But sometimes we tend to throw our net way too wide when it comes to seeking advice. Advice is such a critical piece of information that can really determine how we operate and the next choices that we make, that if we're taking on board advice from people that either it's not trustworthy or it's not authentic, it can really unravel and create a lot of challenges for ourselves personally. The big lesson for me is I started out seeking everybody's advice and didn't quite understand the reality of being more critical with whom I was seeking advice from. Adding that to the self-belief and making sure that I'm true to myself are the three things that I always talk to females about.

I think there's just a lot of people seeking to offer good advice to the organizations, but I think it's identifying the right collaboration and the right marriage of the experience and the expertise that people have with the companies that are striving to really unlock success. Making the right connections is a significant challenge. Digital AI transformation, enterprise-wide scale is quite a large breadth of information that one can be engaged in, and so really harnessing where the focus and attention can be there at its most optimal and most successful way is really critical. I've really made sure that for me, it's about being able to engage with companies that I really feel I can offer value to, that I can bring interest and impact to, by really helping them diagnose the solution and the problem that they're trying to bring to bear for companies, and really help them with their narrative to help them unlock more opportunities.

Honesty and fairness are really important to me. I really value people that have self-awareness. As I look at companies in the future and the engagements that I have with my advisory businesses, I really hone in on those aspects and those values to really make sure that I'm doing something that I feel I can give my whole self to, that I believe in, and that I feel has a belief in me, and will be quite a collaborative kind of environment. That's really how I think about the key values as I want to engage with people in general.