You are a lead responsible at Dell EMC, board member of the Danish IT association and chairwoman at the Danish IT association’s steering committee for Female IT Executives. How has your upbringing shaped you as a person today and to what extent has it triggered your interest in tech?

“Being an immigrant has definitely shaped me a lot. As a little girl, I emigrated with my parents from Poland to Denmark. Growing up with parents that spoke a different language than Danish made me feel different from an early age onwards. My parents were not different in the sense that they were not educated – on the contrary, my mother was a doctor and my dad was an engineer. But they came from a different country and cultural background. At the same time, my parents tried to infuse into me that being different and standing out was not a bad thing. Their encouragement was personality-defining, building my self-confidence to differentiate myself for the better. It also created a lot of competitive spark in me. I felt an obligation to prove myself to my family.

On the IT side, my dad was an engineer and worked very early with information analytics and information management. He got interested in databases and the internet before it was even known as the internet. Hence, I had my first PC in the 80s when other school kids did not have a computer. I think, from that perspective, I grew up with technology. Working in technology was never something I planned but it was very natural to me.”

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You mention that your parents fostered a competitive spark in you. Do you think women have to be competitive in IT?

“Being competitive definitely helped me at a time when there were not many females at my level and the corporate surrounding was probably still a bit tougher than it is today. From that perspective, it was probably very helpful, indeed, but I think in all leadership positions – and that is gender-unrelated – you have to have a bit of this competitive spark that drives you. It helps you overcome this fear of always being at risk of failing to be successful. Yet, given that females are the minority in many cases, they have to fight a bit more.”

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"I am stereotyping a bit here but in general, females are a bit less interested in technology for the sake of technology but more in the outcome of technology." 

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A propos leadership: What is good leadership to you? I read that you consider yourself an empathetic leader. What do you mean with that?

“I think good leadership is based on situational leadership. I don’t think there is one model that fits all situations. I rather think you need different styles for different situations. There is always a part that you control in different situations and how you are going to address things and then there is probably the more personal leadership style.

My main interest as a leader is achieving results through others. That is, I am actually interested in developing people; setting a team in the right way and then getting the most out of them individually and in combination. I think that having the right balance between the interest of the individual and the business outcome drives the best results.

Empathetic leadership style means the following to me: It is about really understanding the people I am dealing with, identifying their challenges and dreams and how I can help them to achieve their best, while benefiting my own business. I think the individual plays an essential role in business. It is not just about the outcome and business alone. Let me reiterate this very basic circle: If your employees and team are happy they smile into the phone and the customers will feel their satisfaction. If the customers are happy, then they buy more, which in turn benefits the business and the team earns more money. Employee satisfaction is important and it can be achieved through good leadership.”

Do you think there is a difference between female and male leadership?

“I do think there are differences between women and men as much as there are differences between women and between men. There is not necessarily a gender leadership: I have met a lot of women leaders without empathy and many men with a lot empathy; I have met many females that are bad leaders and many men that are good leaders. From that perspective, it is not that black and white. But I do think that if we have to generalize and use stereotypes, there is an overage of a little bit more sensitive women than men. I think the balance between EQ and IQ is the best for good leaders.”

Less than two in ten ICT specialists jobs in Europe are held by women (Eurostat 2016).  Do you think it is a problem that there are not that many women in ICT and if so, why? Do you have any solution for increasing the number of women working in ICT?

“I think it is a huge issue, indeed. It is an issue in the sense that you have IT people in all industries developing digital solutions with a huge impact on how we will live as society in the future. After all, the digitization of both private and public sector we are currently experiencing is just the beginning and will be more important in the future as AI and IoT develops. Hence, unless we have a good balance of gender, cultures, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds etc. in developing those solutions and applications, our solutions will not be suitable for all people in going forward.

I do believe it is difficult to manage diversity in a team, compared to very similar personalities in one team. Yet, once a discussion leads to an outcome, the decision is much broader and insightful as it includes so many different perspectives. Unless we get those perspectives included in IT development, I do not think we will develop the right solutions for the digital transformation that our society is undergoing.”

“Unless you have true inclusion in your team, it doesn't really matter if it is diverse. (...)  I think inclusion is much more important than diversity by itself.”

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So how can we enhance diversity in IT companies?

“Unless you start focussing on the issue and measuring it in some form you will not get any results, I believe. I don’t think that just talking and saying we need more diversity will bring anything. I am convinced we need to put measures in place that e.g. encourage leading interviews with females that are potential top candidates to keep the focus on the topic. That said, I think it is much more about diversity rather than gender. Gender is just one aspect of it. It is also much more than a number game. Unless you have true inclusion in your team, it doesn't really matter if it is diverse. For instance, I have been in settings where more than 40 or 50 percent of a team were females but unless the leadership style of that team is inclusive and valuing and trying to utilize differences of opinions you do not get anything out of diversity but just comply with numbers. To this extent, I think inclusion is much more important than diversity by itself.

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The other thing that is critical is understanding the unconscious bias we all have to what success and the ideal candidate looks like. Oftentimes when we have discussions about diversity, one of the arguments of not having females as new leaders or other diverse minorities is that the talent pool is not there to choose from. However, I am convinced that it often comes down to how we define success and what an ideal talent is. There is a lot of research that shows that our unconscious bias drives those decisions: Today, the average perception of a successful leader is a tall, white, male around 50. Hence, in interviews, we would speak out and judge all candidates towards this unconscious bias of what a successful leader looks like rather than looking at what the things are that should really be done in the jobs and evaluating whether these things would matter in that job. Here is an example: A friend of mine, a chairman of a board of global oil and gas companies in Denmark was looking for a person to sit in his board. The board did not have any females, hence they really wanted to have a female member. They started by looking for females in that industry with relevant CEO experience in the oil and gas sector. However, there are few women globally that fit that description. There are two options in going forward. One can say that there is no suitable female talent for the position. The other option is to look at the value chain of the company. The board discovered that a big part of their business was selling to gas stations, which made up a big part of their customers. If one looks at females with retail experience there are actually many. Understanding the customers can be just as important as coming from the oil and gas industry. It is about bringing a general skills set rather than fulfilling specific job descriptions. With this changed mindset, it was very easy to find an adequate woman, after all.”