On Day 2 of ABI’s 2008 Senior TechLeaders at Georgia Institute of Technology, Duy-Loan T. Le, Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments delivered an inspirational keynote on life strategies she uses as a technical leader. Duy-Loan’s leadership is routed in what she terms as the three C’s: confidence, courage and compassion. She urges technical women to not be afraid to assume personal risk. Leadership is about doing the right things with fortitude. The difference between a manager and a leader is that a leader is confident to stand alone. Additionally, a leader asks for forgiveness rather than permission. A leader will nurture team spirit towards common goals and has the courage to make tough decisions.
One of Duy-Loan’s first experiences with an act of courage and confidence was her mother’s decision to leave Vietnam with Duy-Loan and her siblings without their father in the early 70’s. Undoubtedly, watching her mother’s strength in leading her family to settle in a new country is what helped to shape Duy-Loan into the confident leader she is today. Her own early act of courage was her decision to get married when she was 19. She talked about how defying parents in American culture is considered disrespectful however, in Asian culture it is unthinkable. Confident that she was indeed choosing the right partner and she was ready for the responsibility, she stood up to her parents and told them she was getting married (she and her husband are still happily married). She advises leaders to make decisions that are anchored to their principles.
A leader should also serve from the heart. Duy-Loan urges leaders to “do” compassion because it makes a leader become more humane in the process. A leader should demonstrate integrity of intent and quality of intent. Duy-Loan’s definition of integrity is doing what is right in your heart, mind and spirit. She believes that everything you do is important no matter how mundane—in fact the smallest thing has the most impact. Duy-Loan talked about how she experiences neck pain when she travels and one day a colleague asked if she had a lighter laptop that she could use while traveling. She told him that she had the lightest machine in Dell’s line. Her colleague then suggested that given her status as a Senior Fellow she could just ask for a lighter laptop. Duy-Loan responded that yes, she could do that but TI’s policy stated that only Dell laptops would be issued to employees and she would follow company policy even though she knew she could ask for a different machine given her position. For Duy-Loan integrity is priceless and you should never give it up no matter the cost to you—when you give up your integrity you lose your leadership. Leadership is not how good you are, rather it is how long you are good.
Duy-Loan shared other strategies she has used during her career:
1. Be yourself!
2. Ask for help when you need it. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of wisdom.
3. Realize that there are limitations. That way you do not feel guilty because you are not the living by the expectations of others. Live your life the way that you want. How Duy-Loan chooses to live her life allows her to do better in the other parts of her life.
4. Once you have made a decision right or wrong don’t look back. There isn’t any reason to feel guilty if you made the decision based on your principals.
5. Breaking through the old boy’s network: Duy-Loan has kept in mind that you can not have everything at same time but you can have everything over a lifetime. She suggested that to get to know men women need to understand their style of communication and community. Men share camaraderie very much like women enjoy sisterhood of sisterhood. Duy-Loan says that although she wasn’t into golf and hanging out in sports bars, the places were men build rapport with each other and do business at the same time, she learned to talk, mingle and joke with the men she worked with while she was at work and when she joined the activities she was interested in. If they complimented her she would compliment them back and she didn’t take things personally. She urges technical women to have good conversation with their colleagues because that is how they will find out information. Additionally, women should be approachable and comfortable to talk to.
6. Staying Balanced: Duy-Loan says balance to her is the “Triangle of Life” which is made up of family/friends on the bottom with career and civic responsibility making up the other two sides. Duy-Loan selected the triangle because it is the most stable geometric shape and no matter how uneven any side may become they always remain connected. When she leaves work she doesn’t leave it there. She talks about her job with her family and she takes her sons to her events or when she travels for work and speaking engagements. Not only does this allow her to spend time with her children it also allowed her to teach them confidence and how to be around anyone. Duy-Loan coached one of her sons through delivering an acceptance speech for award that she had won and could not travel to accept. When she called him to ask him how the speech went he told her “It went well but mama I have to go because there is a line of people who want to talk to me”. Duy-Loan also shared how she taught her children responsibility at an early age. When her eldest son was four she took him to the store and allowed him to pick out his own alarm clock. She told him that the next day he was to get up, get dressed and get his breakfast on his own (she also explicitly instructed their housekeeper to not assist him). Because she taught her children to be responsible at an early age she knows she does not have to worry about them when she is away from home. She knows that they are responsible.
As she closed her remarkable keynote, Duy-Loan posed the following questions to the Senior TechLeaders workshop participants:
What kind of leader do you want to be and how do you want to be remembered?
The heart of a true leader beats with passion and compassion and that is how Duy-Loan wants to be remembered.