Three Leadership Dimensions that I Experienced After My Grandmother’s Passing Away

On 18 July 2021, I received a call from my aunt, and she let me know the bad news: my grandmother passed away. For the last one and a half months, she was struggling with various health problems (the one most painful for us was Alzheimer – speaking to someone you know well but she doesn’t remember you is so tough) and she was in the intensive care unit for her last two weeks. She was 95 years old, and we were somehow preparing ourselves for this bad news but losing someone you love is always hard to accept.

It is more than three weeks after my grandmother’s passing away and within these days, I had the chance to turn inward, evaluate and find out some key take-aways from my last experience. Related with my professional business life in Philip Morris International, I am so thankful to be in this organization. This last experience reminded me three leadership dimensions:

1. A Solid Team Supporting Consumer First
2. Back-up Policy to Empower People
3. Digital Workplace for Forward Looking

A Solid Team Supporting Consumer First

I have joined PMI Duty Free organization in June 2020. Due to the conditions of the pandemic, I didn’t get the chance to meet physically with my supervisor, DF Finance management team, and some of my colleagues even in our affiliate located in Turkey. Shared objectives and common vision within our team mediate the effects of physical separation.

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In Duty Free, we are a global team, and I am working closely with colleagues not only from Istanbul but also Lausanne, Hong Kong, and Krakow. When I let my colleagues know about my grandmother, they expressed their condolences with warm messages which made me feel their support. Such tough days are good to test the level of relationship among the team. All my colleagues underlined the fact that “family comes first” and shared that they are ready to support me. That solid team spirit energized me.

One of the three dimensions (the other two are Empowering People and Forward Looking) of PMI Leadership Model is Consumer First. This shared passion for putting (internal) consumers first enables us to work even better as one PMI team. We work together across markets, functions, and teams, breaking down barriers and placing our shared goals before self-interests.

Back-up Policy to Empower People

One of the most stressful things in my job was the lack of defined back-up roles, especially for critical activities. Once I even had pointed out this issue to our ex-Finance Director through Officevibe survey (a tool to increase and grow employee engagement. Those questions are designed to engage employees and make it enticing to respond.) Then I focused on knowledge transfer sessions for key activities to my colleague who is reporting to me (I find “colleague” more friendly than “direct report”) and we requested roles and access rights (especially SAP rights) that she can back up me when needed.

Being aware of the fact that my colleague can act on behalf of me whenever needed created a comfort zone for me in those hard days. At the same time, this was a challenge and opportunity for her to show that she can manage when I am physically away.

All of us need opportunities to stretch our skills regularly. The more often we repeat tasks, the faster we get and the more efficient our organization becomes. We learn by attempting something difficult that lies just outside our comfort zone, observing the outcome, and making adjustments. That’s how learning happens.

In PMI, another dimension of our leadership model is empowering people. Empowering People is all about being sure that managers provide their teams with context, clear direction, and measurable objectives. As employees of PMI, Empowering People asks each of us to actively support each other and give each other the space to deliver; that we keep an open mind and are proactive about asking for feedback and taking action on that feedback; owning our development and helping develop others. That ensures people know precisely what is expected of them and what success looks like. If we get this right, we can empower and trust others to deliver great work, always ensuring they have the support and encouragement they need. In our case, after noticing the lack of back-up personnel, I focused on delegation and empowerment and when the time for real-test comes, we see that the hard work for such days pays off.

Digital Workplace for Forward Looking

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PMI’s digital workplace tools provide space to deliver in each circumstance. When I needed to deal with official things related with funeral procedures, I could easily follow up my urgent to-do’s and answer my mails, talk with my colleagues in MS Teams and even share any file from my OneDrive when I was on mobile. That makes me less stressed because I know that I can provide a solution, coordinate, and cooperate as long as I have one device that I can connect to my Office 365 account. Real-time collaboration on documents and accessing my and my team’s content from any device (thanks to the cloud) bring real productivity. The flows that I have previously set in Microsoft Power Automate continue to do their repeating tasks without my intervention. While doing all these, I know that PMI always keeps our data safe and on track, and in order to do that, my colleagues in IT department have continuously brought some enhancements.

Our third leadership dimension is Forward Looking. We need to act with a sense of urgency and be clear on our priorities—making decisions informed by data and facts on a timely basis—but also keeping in mind that at times we may need to change course to achieve the same goal. Our digital infrastructure and investments in digital workplace solutions continue to deliver benefits to end-users by providing new tools and features and removing those which are not fit for purpose anymore.

In conclusion, I have been passing through a hard time and these days make me think and evaluate the main facts of my life. From a professional life perspective, I also focused on how I manage and lead within this last experience. As challenging as the job can be at times, it is vital to stay balanced in front of internal and external consumers. At the same time, none of us are just professionals. We all have personal lives which have impacts on us. Leadership is about inspiring the team for success. I am a genuine member of a diverse team that inspires and supports me towards the shared objectives. Creating meaning for colleagues, providing motivation, and ensuring career development are also important traits for leaders to empower their colleagues. That is what I learn from my leaders and what I try to exercise and lead by example. Lastly, the right technology capabilities and infrastructure are decisive elements of being disruptive. As disruptive innovators, we must change the way how we lead, how we behave, how we think, how we make decisions, and how we organize ourselves. At that point, technology and digital workplace are key enablers for us within our transformation journey.