In preparation for my post 9 Successful Women of Israel Answer: What Piece of Advice Would You Give to Your Younger Self? one of the women I spoke to was Neta Feller, VP of Human Resources at Natural Intelligence, a speaker who I met at the Globes conference.
Neta was generous with her time and elaborated on three pieces of advice she would give to her younger self. Much of it, she tends to share with the workforce at Natural Intelligence.
Because my previous was a much shorter post, I couldn’t incorporate all her valuable advice. And so I chose to write an additional post, especially dedicated to dive deeper into Neta’s advice to her younger self.
1. Smile and the world will smile back at you. I really believe that if you do good, good will come to you. Be a good person, be good to people and good will come back to you.
2. Constantly look at the people that are around you and learn from them. I tell people who want to be managers to pay attention. Learn from your managers, notice their different styles and adopt the aspects that are right for you. You can learn something from every one of them. I had three very different mentors. But I learned a ton from each of them. From each one I took a lot but I knew when to say ‘this is hers, it doesn’t suit me.’ Constantly look at life, examine it, learn from it and choose what’s right for you.
3. I have an amazing husband. Our careers are important to both of us and so is our home and our family. From the beginning we had conversations about our role at home and at work. In the years that I had more free time, I did more at home and now that he has a bit more free time, he does more. I have a forum for women at the company where my goal is to empower them. In universities [at the BA, MA and Phd levels] more than 50% are women, women make up 51% of the workforce, but then when it gets to management positions, things change drastically. It’s fine for women to work at home, if that’s what they choose. But it’s important that they make that decision with their partner. If they made that decision and it was through a conversation they had with their couple, that’s fine. The issue is, if you choose it. For me it’s really hard to see women that didn’t manage that conversation in the past 15-20 years that they’re in a relationship and then they become frustrated. You have to talk about it and manage it.
I think that what’s so important here is that Neta freely shares her insights. As a VP of Human Resources, it’s vital to share insights that will contribute to employee growth. It seems to me that in the age of social media when it’s so easy to digitally connect with other people, it is becoming profoundly harder to connect on a more human level. Those skills much be honed. By speaking to people and learning from them, we can hone those skills as well as learn, both of which will propel us to the next level.
