As said by Marc Anthony: “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
This fully applies to our Pioneering Woman, Nancy Zakharia Ohanessian.
Nancy’s professional journey is a journey of ambitious courage. It has always been about pushing boundaries and taking a leap of faith through all the career pivots she encountered. Making a difference in people’s lives and bringing peace and harmony to the world is what drives Nancy. For her, there was no better way to manifest her purpose and passion than through coaching and creating and leading leadership development initiatives. Evoking transformation for individuals and teams and witnessing them flourish amidst all the disruption that is taking place in our VUCA world gives her great fulfillment.
Driven by Purpose
Nancy is driven to bring peace and harmony to the world through the work she does. This thought helps her stay focused by tuning her inner compass to the activities and actions that will help her achieve that purpose.
Integrity, doing the right thing even when no one is watching, is the basis on which she builds everything. That has helped her gain the Credibility and Trust of the stakeholders she works with, something that she is very grateful for. A curious learner, she is open to feedback and assumes the attitude of a traveler when venturing into new things, exploring, learning, and being receptive to new perspectives.
As a big-picture and long-term thinker, Nancy is able to notice themes and connect the dots to find solutions or create new ideas. Strategies are then put into action by planning ahead while incorporating flexibility to allow for any needed changes along the way. “I can consider myself an experimental innovator who is not rigid in the pursuit of my vision, persevere through challenges, and have the ability to cope with the emotional impact of any challenges and failure.I have the willingness of being imperfect,” says Nancy as she describes herself.
A fast-paced person, Nancy has the ability to make an intentional shift to be effective in changing contexts while honoring commitments and going above and beyond to meet them. She is big on collaboration and sees its impact on the outcomes, there is no innovation without collaboration.
Braving through Challenges
Nancy’s main superpowers are that she can react to unexpected challenges and changes and remain calm and focused. She is fearless in the sense that she feels the fear and does it anyway while relying on her intuition and seeing through individuals and situations. She listens to the whole system and whole person simultaneously which creates that ease of connection, safety, and collective holding space, and brings mutual understanding as well as helps in decision-making and envisioning long-term scenarios.
One of the major challenges she faced is pivoting careers 4 times before finding her ultimate fulfillment in what she currently does. With each transition came the challenge of moving into something totally different and new where people were skeptical about her abilities in that role, and even questioning her sanity in the general sense of things of plunging into something that she knew nothing about.
“With a new career that you are not familiar with comes apprehension, comes fear, comes doubt, and it comes with others doubting you and your capabilities to be able to pick up a new area and lead with it. An ’unrealistic dreamer’ is one of the words that I was addressed with, and I proved everyone wrong with my ambitious courage, learner attitude, and my vulnerability and authenticity,” says Nancy.
Balancing career and family was the other biggest challenge along the way. Nancy prides herself on being able to prioritize work, family time, and personal time as per her need at the moment. “There isn’t a perfect formula for that but when I feel family time is suffering, I ensure to give it more attention as soon as the work priority is over. So, it’s a cycle and it’s important to find your own rhythm,” she explains.
What she learned through her challenges is that one can achieve what one sets his/her mind on and the sky is not the limit. One must be systemic about the steps one takes. She first made sure that she upskilled herself and gathered knowledge around the new area she was venturing into, and then she always gave her best. As a result, she was able to excel at all the roles she assumed and implement new initiatives that brought a lot of value to the organizations at that time.
For example, when she started her career as a school teacher in the 90s, she ended up creating two Science activity books that were published by the school and used by students for several years, even after she left teaching. In her first HR role, she initiated an in-house outplacement support program that has received positive feedback across the organization and departing employees.
“What I learned about myself is that I am an extremely resilient warrior. My purpose has allowed me to find ways in which competing demands can be met; helped me in having flexibility under pressure and more creativity in the face of insoluble problems. I came to understand and accept that failure in the form of making mistakes and being imperfect is essential to success,” says Nancy.
Uplifting Initiatives
Nancy believes that the best ideas come out of challenges. The challenges faced in the past years at a macro and micro level have demanded approaching many things in an innovative way ranging from small to bigger initiatives. “One of the things I would like to highlight here was intensifying working with individuals and teams on defining their purpose knowing how important that is and since COVID years were reset years to many with several challenges faced by individuals and teams,” she says.
Many individuals that Nancy encountered were disoriented, they felt that they were lost in the middle of the various challenges that the COVID era posed. As for teams, there was a lot of miscommunication, misunderstanding, and silo work happening especially with the new working norm that we have transitioned to while having the fast-forward button on. Her work has performed magic in helping individuals to align with their true north, and helping teams discover why they exist and how can they co-exist as a group of individuals and operate as a team to drive for a common purpose, increase productivity, and eventually enhance profitability.
The other initiative that she created, initiated, and led in 2022 is the Women’s development program. The program is over a period of 12 months and is aimed at women leaders showing potential and aspiring to advance their careers into more senior leadership roles. It incorporates different elements among which are 4 learning modules, mentoring, online defined learning paths, case studies, exposure to senior leadership, working on a business-related project, and coaching sessions with me throughout the duration of the program. “I have started working on the program to present it to the key stakeholders at the organization after observing some obstacles that might have been hindering the progress of women in a male-dominated Oil & Gas industry and to align with the organization’s strategy and focus on DE&I. The program was launched last year in one of the regions and was a huge success that this year it will be launched at a global level within the organization,” shares Nancy.
Making Diversity Mainstream
Organizations around the globe have heightened the focus on Diversity and Inclusion. This is not only because it’s the right thing to do but because it has considerable financial and business benefits.
Nancy feels that DE&I should not only be looked at as an HR initiative or an HR policy, but as an organization’s strategy, culture, and way of operation. “DE&I strategy has to be driven from the top and every leader in the organization is accountable in embedding DE&I through their actions and behaviors, and equal responsibility lies on all employees. HR is to support the leaders in leading and implementing initiatives and actions to ensure a healthy inclusive organization culture,” she says.
HR can also support the organization with the awareness and education piece around DE&I, but that’s not enough to have DE&I successfully woven. This also means embedding DE&I principles in all HR practices throughout the employee life cycle. HR will drive the policies to identify talent, ensure that the right talent is in the right place and that they are equitably treated and rewarded, and foster an environment where everyone feels they belong and they can flourish. Having flexibility, tailored benefits, and fair maternity and paternity policies, are just some basic examples of how HR can drive DE&I through policies. Embedding technology and AI into HR processes from recruitment to onboarding to technology-supported talent pools, talent reviews, succession planning, compensation, and others will help in minimizing many of the biases and thus help in driving the DE&I strategy.
Handling Generational Gaps in a Team
A business will always be the sum of its own parts which is why it’s important to have a diverse team from all aspects including diverse generations. Diversity creates the mix but it’s important to make this mix work through Inclusion. One of the key things is to approach it with a beginner’s mind: accepting ideas, being open and receptive to learning, and altering leadership style as needed.
Generations, believes Nancy, are just age stages that we all will pass through them as humans. It’s important to address the uniqueness of every individual and put efforts into Inclusion and helping all employees feel a sense of belonging. Listening to the needs and motivations of each generation is key, it is essential to understand what matters to them and the differences in the way of work among them. That will give managers the starting point for creating high-performing teams. A great way as well as to have a strong mentoring program in place where all generations can exchange knowledge and benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience.
“I am a strong believer in the power of mentoring as it benefits mentees and mentors alike. I would also like to emphasize the positive impact of reverse mentoring; the younger generation has a lot to offer that will benefit other generations when given the chance. This will help in creating a healthy collaboration and learning culture within the team and the organization,” suggests Nancy.
Advising the Young
Nancy recently received the ‘101 Most Iconic Global Coaching Leaders’ award on the 15th of February during the 31st World HRD Congress in Mumbai India. During the International Business Excellence Awards 2023, she was selected as ‘Chair of Judges’ chairing the panel of judges on the two categories she was judging at.
Nancy shares the following message with budding entrepreneurs:
Clarify and connect with your purpose, follow your heart, and ‘just do it’.
Only when you are consistent in what you say and what you do you will bring your purpose to life and project authenticity. I love how Simon Sinek puts it in his book Start With Why: “Without Why any attempt at authenticity will almost always be inauthentic”.
Partner with a coach to help you widen your perspectives and extract the hidden gems within you. Grow your network and surround yourself with people who lift you up, challenge your boundaries, and broaden your horizon. Let go of perfectionism and seize opportunities; always start by asking what can you ‘give’ to others not what can you ‘get’ out of it and success will be on your side.
Next on the Goal List
Accelerating growth always starts with a focus on accelerating people’s growth. Nancy’s focus in 2023 continues to be coaching leaders and their teams and delivering best-in-class leadership development programs to them. She has witnessed the power of coaching firsthand and seen the incredible transformation at an individual level and at a team and organization results level. “Continuing with my purpose to expand my reach and impact is a necessary part of the plan.
While everyone is focusing on the technology side of things I aim to humanize, bring more of the human aspects to business transactions and relationships,” concludes Nancy.
Quote: ‘If you always try to fit in, you will never have the life you deserve.’ -Tony Robbins