#72 Women in leadership: How to be heard with Virginie Boucinha

Top Insights from this episode:

• Success is not just about achieving goals at work, it’s important to be fulfilled, which comes from inspiring others and creating impact around you.
• Find one person who supports your cause and helps you in the organization. One sponsor is enough to help you embark on your path.
• If you struggle to get heard in a meeting, here are 4 tips that Virginie share:
• Use humor to shift the energy of the meeting.
• Talk about the elephants in the room.
• Put the hard topics on the table
• Build alliances with people you work with.
• To create gender balance in your teams, set clear rules and boundaries on the values that are important. Every time it is violated, speak about it until becomes a practice. Say it in a non-blaming non-judging way, and don’t be silent about it.
• To ensure you are involved in decision making ensure
• You are building the necessary and right bilateral relationships.
• Don’t be shy!
• Don’t care much how others perceive you.
• Having an executive presence is about the ability to
• Have the real quality conversations.
• Make quality decisions.
• Give space to people to move forward with autonomy.
• To grow stronger with debates.
• How do we manage time as an individual, mother, wife and businesswomen?
• Accept all the different part of you.
• It may not be possible to have a 24hr period where you are efficient in all areas of your life. Accept that there will be periods where you will be more at work and then there will be time for kids and other things.
• Being just in one area of life can be boring.
• Final Advice:
• Surround yourself with people who can give you candid feedback, i.e. give you both the tough and good feedback.
• Connections: Build true meaningful relationships and stay connected.

About Virginie Boucinha

Virginie Boucinha works at the headquarters of Sanofi,Paris, as the Global Head of Transformation. At Sanofi, she was previously the Chief of staff CEO Office. She is mother of 4 children. Virginie Boucinha is icon of intelligence, strength and humbleness. A strong women leader from whom we can learn a lot. She has also lived abroad in Morocco and India.