'These are the building blocks that make for an authentic future leader'

Nokwanda Shabalala is the regional GM for Coca-Cola Beverages SA’s (CCBSA’s) coastal region, which is the company’s largest region by territory, covering KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and parts of the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces.

Shabalala was born and raised in KwaZulu-Natal in a small village called Matiwaneskop, just outside Ladysmith, and attended high school in eMadadeni Township, Newcastle. She went on to acquire a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from UCT, and a master's degree in engineering management from the George Washington University in the US.

Shabalala has been living outside the province since matric and was happy to return earlier this year when she joined CCBSA’s coastal region, relocating from Gauteng, where she was the regional GM for CCBSA’s Gauteng region. 

Her past work experience also includes working in investment banking (mergers & acquisitions) at Standard Bank Corporate & Investment Banking, and in strategy and business development at SABMiller Africa.

Here, Shabalala reflects on her journey to becoming a GM and shares advice for other women aspiring towards leadership positions:

If you were to summarise the qualities that have supported your path to the GM role, what qualities come to mind?

Goal-orientated, single-mindedness, inquisitiveness and tenacity.

How do you lead people to achieve excellence?

Any leader exists for the primary reason to get the best out of the people they lead, creating an environment where the people they lead can thrive and give the best of themselves.

This could mean identifying and removing obstacles that hold them back, driving a culture of high performance, instilling a “can do” attitude, capacitating and upskilling people or simply giving people permission and space to showcase what they are capable of. 

Each case is specific but at the end of the day, the leader must lead its people to greater heights.

Could you describe a moment that has really tested you as a leader?

When I started in my GM role in Gauteng, I had less sales management experience than many members of the sales team in the Gauteng commercial division and I had periods where the “imposter syndrome” found comfortable residence in my mind and made me wonder if I was right to accept the role and if I am up to its demands.

How did you overcome this?

It was a combination of a) being surrounded by supportive people who believed in me and opened their doors for me to reach out if I needed to, b) my strong work ethic that wouldn’t let me rest until I had figured out or resolved what needed to be done and c) support from home that allowed me the space to put in the long hours it needed.

I also had to remind myself what I am capable of and past obstacles I had overcome and achievements I had recorded.

What is your vision for coastal region for 2023?

My vision for coastal region is to ensure that we deliver the region’s share of the 2023 business goals and more.

It starts and ends with our people. Processes and procedures do not run themselves. It is the people in the organisation that get things done. We need engaged and energised people that want to achieve greatness. Our role as leaders is to create an environment that energises, clarifies, capacitates and leaves our people believing that our goals are reachable.

Right next to our people, are our customers. Without our customers, we are nowhere. In addition, having people who will go all the way for our common objectives, we need to foster solid relationships with our customers who partner with us on the basis of mutual benefit from having CCBSA coastal as their supplier.

What advice do you have for young women aspiring towards leadership positions?

These are the elements I believe are important building blocks towards building a future authentic leader:

• Spend some time developing self-awareness. Know yourself: the good you can celebrate, the bad you need to work on harder than others, and the ugly that you must just accept and make peace with. Self-awareness builds confidence as you know what you are really good at and no one can take that away from you. It also brings peace as you know the things you constantly need to work at that do not come easily to you.  You also know which spaces you just don't play in, allowing you to celebrate others who do play in those spaces.
  
  
• Define for yourself what success looks like before other people define it for you. This enables you to be resilient in the face of criticism because you will always have a place to go back to that defines for you what success is, regardless of the criticism. It also keeps you from being complacent when other people over-celebrate what you do because you know you wanted more for yourself.
  
  
• Celebrate other people’s success, be it at your level or below. Celebrating them does not take away from your own successes.

• Compete with your goals and your deliverables, not with other people. Fight to win against your targets, ambitions and goals, not against the next person. There’s nothing wrong with benchmarking against others comparable to you but benchmarking and competing are two different things.

What needs to be done to support more women in business?

When we look at supporting women in business and driving diversity and economic inclusion, we should take a holistic approach. We need to look both inside as well as outside our business, such as the suppliers we work with and the communities in which we operate.

At CCBSA, one of our internal initiatives is the Women@CCBSA platform. This is a safe, virtual forum where women in our business can share and learn from their experiences and draw strength from one another. The business understands that we are not machines, and sometimes ignoring our mental and emotional wellbeing comes at the price of low morale and productivity levels. The forum assists women in our organisation to navigate the challenges they face daily. This is just one of the ways in which we can contribute to building a more resilient organisation in which the wellbeing of our employees takes priority.

CCBSA has also made strategic investments in procurement, which has resulted in increased spend with black-owned suppliers from 50% to just over 61% of its total adjusted procurement spend, 34% of which are black female-owned.

We also have Bizniz in a Box, an innovative Youth & Women Empowerment Programme, which helps build township and rural economies by developing black youth and women-owned businesses that are responsive to the needs of their communities. It aims to help reduce youth and women unemployment, poverty and inequality.

This article was sponsored by CCBSA.