I recently had the pleasure to talk to Nicole Toomey Davis, President, CEO and co-founder of AI-software company, Enclavix, LLC, creators of the VentureWrench Startup Community on my new podcast called, Today’s Top Leader. Each guest on Today’s Top Leader is recognized as a top leader in today’s tech space and is nominated to be on the show by someone who acknowledges the positive impact that person made on their career. Nicole was nominated by Andrew Willis, Director of Kaysville Small Business Development Center. Here’s what Andrew had to say about Nicole:
“One thing I would say is that Nicole is very humble. When you look at her experience, it blows you away to see, you know, here’s somebody who’s been a leader in not only the tech sector, but in helping to grow businesses, across the board with entrepreneurs everywhere. And yet, she is willing to spend the time to help individual entrepreneurs grow.”
Nicole believes a lot more emphasis on leadership and good management needs to be placed within the tech industry. And more appreciation needs to be given to the engineers and computer scientists who are the true heart, innovators and creators within tech companies. Unfortunately, these creators are often times not the individuals who get promoted. Promotions are usually reserved for the management team of the company, the talkers. Conversely, engineers are more known to be on the introverted side. Engineers have this amazing ability to focus on complex problems for long periods of time. Per Nicole, “…the ability to do that is the flip side of needing to talk all the time. And needing to be around people. You can’t have both. And so, I actually think that one of the things we don’t really understand well in leadership and technology is how do we nurture that very gift that matters.” In fact, often times, if an engineer wants to get promoted, they are encouraged to go the management route. But technologists should be allowed to stay technologists and have a career path that enables them to do so. Other industries have seemed to figure this out, however for some reason the tech industry still needs to determine when it comes to the talents of their engineers,
How do we nurture it?
How do we protect it?
How do we value it?
Please be sure to click here to listen to part 1 of my very insightful and candid conversation with Ms. Nicole Toomey Davis.