Here is an excerpt from an interview of Pauline Yau, director for central government at Microsoft UK. It was conducted by Primeast: “Since 1987, we have been facilitating performance improvement in the fields of Leadership, Organisational Change and Teamwork, with purposeful organisations and communities. Some of the world’s most respected organisations trust us to deliver beyond expectations.  They rely on us to balance results with personal success in order to facilitate sustainable performance.”

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As part of Primeast’s Women in Leadership series, we interviewed Pauline Yau, director for central government at Microsoft UK. Pauline shared with us her journey, the experiences she’s had being a woman in the workplace, the challenges she’s encountered as a female leader, and her thoughts on the current environment for professional women.

What is your current role?

I am the director for central government at Microsoft UK. What this means in plain English is I have a team of people that are all selling to central government organisations, which are Whitehall departments and central government agencies.

I have a team of 12 people that report into me. I have a mix of sales people and also technology specialists. This means there is a mix of extrovert sales people and then more introvert technology specialists and all of them are out dealing with central government people every single day.

It must be an interesting dynamic to manage?

Yeah it is and I think this is where some of your EQ (emotional intelligence quotient) really comes into play because I think personally it’s a very female trait being able to manage this sort of dynamic. We’re very good at empathising, sensing and putting ourselves in the shoes of others. And so a lot of my role is adapting any messages I need to deliver to the team to individuals in a way that will resonate best for them. For example, whereas I might be a bit more to the point and harsh with my sales people, I’ll maybe go into the reasoning and the data with the more technical folks because they respond better to understanding the reasons why something is happening.

What journey did you have to get to where you are?

I left school at 16. One of the best bits of my job is standing in front of teenage girls and telling them that my highest qualification is a GCSE. I have to say it’s not something I’m immensely proud about. I left school with seven grade A GCSEs but it was never presented to me as an option to go to college or university. Nobody in my family had ever done it and I went to a school where that aspiration was just never presented to you, so I just assumed – and my family assumed – that at 16 you’d go out to work.

When I’m talking to young girls I’m always very transparent about the size of the business I run and then I go “but I left school at 16” and you can see their teachers flinching in the background going “don’t tell them that, don’t tell them that”, but actually it seems to resonate really well with them that there is a different option, there is a different path. While I would absolutely hugely encourage any school leaver to continue into further and higher education, it’s not for everyone and there are different options available.

I kind of fell into the technology industry by accident. The first company I worked for was WordPerfect UK and I worked as a telesales person. That was really the start of my technology sales career. I moved to various companies, most recently I was with Adobe running their UK education business. I then had my daughter and decided that actually I just wanted to work for myself and pick and choose the times that I work a bit better so I freelanced for a while, then I went to a start up, then I came to Microsoft two years ago. I never set out to sell technology for a living; it’s just what I ended up doing.

I have a lot of girls coming into Microsoft and they talk to various women and learn about what they do and part of that is about helping people understand that working in the tech industry doesn’t mean that you have to be technical. I am the least technical person on the planet I’m sure but I’ve spent god knows how many years working in the technology industry. And I think it’s important that we show that to work in the technology industry you don’t have to be technical.

When you leave school at 16 what you need is just an enormous amount of drive and ambition because you’re relying on that, you’re not relying on any form of formal education to get you a foot in the door anywhere.

During my time in the start-up world I was exposed to a lot of folks who’d chosen entrepreneurship as their career path. They didn’t want to work for anyone else, they wanted to start their own business. I think kids that leave school, college or university with that aspiration have to be commended because it’s tough. But I think we’ve got a long way to go to recognise that as a career choice that we should encourage and support in our young people.

What were the main challenges you’ve encountered over the years?

I guess it changes over time. I very vividly remember when I was starting out and in my early 20s, age was always the barrier. You were told you were too young to do things but I never listened to that. After having my daughter – who’s seven now – one of the challenges was ‘what do I do now’. I was unfortunately made redundant when I was on maternity leave and that was tough. There I was with a small baby thinking I want to work and I think it’s very difficult. This is why organisations need to change because it’s very difficult for external candidates to negotiate flexible working. I really wanted to work but as an external candidate it was really hard for me to be able to negotiate any type of flexible working arrangements. And I think it’s much easier if you’re already working inside an organisation and suddenly you need to have that flexible working. So that was a real barrier for me around that time and that’s when I started freelancing. I set up my own business and just did contract work for various organisations. I’d work with them for a three-month period, set them up and move onto the next one. So that was a challenge because suddenly I had to build my own business.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.