An Interview with Nikole Collins Puri, CEO of Techbridge Girls in Oakland, CA.

Sande: What do you know about leadership now that you wish you knew when you started in your role as an executive director?

Nikole Collins Puri: When I became a first time CEO of Techbridge Girls, there was a lot of work to do — creating a clear vision, strengthening the organization, fundraising, and developing a plan to scale. 

Often I was so focused on “righting the ship” that I didn’t take the necessary time to bring our team and stakeholders along the way with me.  What I learned is that yes, that work is important, but you also have to contextualize the work through the needs, fears, and expectations of your team and stakeholders.

As the leader, you’re delegating while trusting and empowering your team to be fully engaged with the vision so that they can deliver the work.

I’m learning to step back from the day-to-day work, make more space to nurture my creativity, and shift from doing the work to becoming a leader who guides, coaches, inspires, and uplifts the mission.

What has made me most effective is that I have showed up as a leader based on what is needed in that moment. I’ve gained the ability to adapt, be flexible and lean in. You can’t be a monolithic leader. You have to be an adaptable leader.

Sande: What one thing would you tell a new leader to do that would show they understood this idea that it’s about the people, that its’ about emotional intelligence?

Nikole: Active listening and vulnerability.

Active listening means realizing that you have to take the time to listen and understand what motivates your team, what concerns your team, what fears are within your team, what excites your team.

And yes, along may come a pandemic, which changes everything, as well as the everyday realities of working within a nonprofit, so you’ll have to bob and weave and be flexible.

Always being in that spirit of active listening is critical so that you can understand how to identify and lean into the leadership that is required in those moments of change.

And I say vulnerability with a caveat. Many people are told to be vulnerable, but as a Black woman leader, as a woman of color leader, society does not allow me to do that in full authenticity without potential repercussions or negative judgments.

So I think that as you build your currency with the organization and your board of directors – showing your competence, building relationships and trust with others– then you can start to allow that vulnerability to be expressed. Because in our society, your race and your gender is intricately connected to what you have to do to build that currency, and you can feel like you can lose everything you’ve built at any moment.

Sande: What’s important about leading change?

Nikole: You have to realize there is a pattern in the evolution of change. Folks go through a cycle where first there’s resistance, then acceptance to change, and finally there’s adoption of the change. And each of these phases can take time.

I didn’t realize the impact of not acknowledging and working through each phase of the cycle, especially the resistance phase.  I think we take for granted that our team will eventually “catch up.” 

As leaders, you see the long game, and you can have tunnel vision. But when we deny our teams’ feelings, we help perpetuate the resistance. So you have to acknowledge the resistance, while keeping consistency and constancy about the vision. That’s how you’ll ultimately get to acceptance and adoption.

Leading in change is knowing that it may have to go slower than you anticipated.

And going slower may mean letting go of that feeling of urgency. I think most leaders have this feeling of “we’ve got to get there, we got to achieve it, we’re passionate.” But you may need to take the time to break down the strategy into smaller bite sizes, whether that’s the work itself, or the emotional aspect of the change that’s creating tension.

So you may find that the vision that you had for that annual year goal may take two years, right? You have to ask yourself what is the impact to that slow down? You have to assess the risk.

When leading through change, you need active listening while asking yourself hard questions about the level of urgency around that change.

And finally, you’ll need to be very intentional and consistent with the messaging about why you’re making the change and how it connects back to the larger vision.

Sande: What does it mean to ask for help in your role, and what does help look like?

Nikole: First and foremost, being a leader does not mean that you have all the answers. And I think once you recognize that, you realize that you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, you don’t have to be the go-to for the decision, and you don’t have to be the brains that comes up with the idea to move everything forward.

Once you realize that, you can get excited about asking for help because help doesn’t feel like a deficiency of something that you can’t do, but an asset that is adding onto something that you already know how to do or provide a space for growth and learning.

Asking for help is a strength versus a deficiency.

I rely on a “kitchen cabinet.” These are individuals that have been in this role before, and/or individuals that have certain types of experiences that I know I’m about to have.

So for example, when I acquired an organization while at Techbridge Girls, I didn’t know where to start. I asked some of our sister funds in the women’s funding movement that had acquired other organizations, “Who funds this stuff? Are there any case studies around it?”

Relying on a network of people that have a very broad range of skills and experiences is crucial.

You want to make sure that you have a network that is broad and expansive enough so that whenever you don’t know something, you can connect with someone who does know.

As a leader, you should authentically always be building relationships. You should be giving of yourself to others, just as you want others to give of themselves to you. That way, when you need to make that phone call, the person on the other end of the line doesn’t feel like, “oh, you just called me out of the blue.” Rather, they feel like “my friend is calling, or my colleague is calling, or my sister in this space is calling me to connect, or to ask for help. And I want to be there for her.”

Sande: How does racial justice play into your leadership practices?

Nikole: As an organization, we’re gaining greater awareness about how white supremacy culture perpetuates in our own cultures, in our own being, and how we need to navigate it. I’ve learned that white supremacist culture is almost the conditioned default for many of us.

As a woman of color leading an organization, I now feel like I have the language to explain my dance between the navigation of dominance and transforming it at the same time. We have language for describing the mindsets, practices and expectations of white dominant culture that do not enable us, but instead often oppress us in our authenticity. And we’re able to use that language more explicitly versus implicitly.

Language gives you a way to express something which you may know intuitively, but now you’re able to speak openly about it, with others.

I’ve built up my understanding of white supremacy culture enough to understand and acknowledge that in navigating to where I am now. I can’t deny that leaning into aspects of dominant culture has helped me in leadership positions throughout my career. But now, I have the ability to write a new story defining leadership and elevate the uniqueness and authenticity of leadership through the eyes of a Black woman.

Now that I have the language, I feel like I can be more empowering to show the staff how we are combating white dominant culture.

(To learn more about the language for describing and understanding white supremacy culture see White Supremacy Culture by Team Okun and The Bias of Professionalism Standards by Aysa Gray)

Sande: Anything else that you want to say? Any final words?

Nikole: I would just say give yourself a pat on the back as a leader.

It’s okay to do that. It’s okay to beef yourself up. I’m saying this because as a woman of color in leadership, I want to see us celebrated for our brilliance and approach to leadership. It doesn’t mean you’re not humble. It’s about giving yourself your flowers because you are owed it and you deserve it. And we often feel like that’s not reserved for us. We don’t need it. We don’t do this work to get patted on the back. But, it is important for our spirits.

And when you give yourself grace in that way, you do it not only in your accomplishments, but also in your shortcomings.

Also, be sure to take care of yourself – give yourself space to do that.

Go get that massage you wanted. Make sure you take that extra long stroll – not just the 30 minute walk because you need to get it in because it’s your health – but taking that extra 15 minutes of that time, where you can just wander away and wander off in thought and space and presence.

This interview is part of my Defining Leadership: Conversations with Women Leaders series.