Chantelle Breithaupt is one of the top executives at Cisco. She reports directly to Kelly Kramer, Cisco’s CFO, and manages a $13B business to boot. She’s one of the leaders that makes you want to be better, work harder, ask more questions - and be inspired.

Enjoy learning about Chantelle’s path through leadership and into the executive ranks, in her own words - and be sure to follow her on Twitter!

Name: Chantelle Breithaupt           

Title: Vice President, Finance, Customer Experience Division

Company: Cisco

Twitter: @jetgirl25 

Tell us a little bit about yourself: your role and job, how you got here, what the role entails and a bit of background on you.

My job as Vice President of Finance for our Customer Experience Division entails many different aspects of fun.  I get to lead everything from hitting our quarterly and annual goals for a $13B business, to rewiring the company to a new recurring revenue business model.  This is my 4th role in 5 years, and I truly believe that role rotation is a key aspect of development, although it does not always have to be that extreme!  I ended up in the San Francisco Bay area after spending 15 years with GE between Canada, Belgium and France.   

Fun Facts: Fun facts include that I enjoy MIG welding, I enter 5-10k runs in different parts of the world to get to know new cities & countries (have visited 53 countries either personally or professionally) and I am married to an artist that is complete left-brain to my right-brain, corporate life.  Recently I joined the board of Rising Above the Storms, a non-profit founded by a fellow Cisco colleague that helps children and provides hope to the hopeless by advocating for orphans and promoting education in Rwanda.

What are you passionate about? How did this influence your ability or decision to take on an executive role?

I am passionate about a few things, these include:

a) A sense of fairness for all

b) Helping those who help themselves

c) Learning by doing

d) Taking risk

These passions come through in different ways at various times. Through “learning by doing” I earn credibility with those around me, which allows for potential leadership in that area of focus. With a sense of fairness for all I am more prone to listen to all views and perspectives which can create a real dynamic of diversity of thought, which almost always leads to a better outcome. Although I am committed to developing female talent, overall I am generally very keen to help those who have the personal drive to work hard, to learn and yet be humble to give credit where it is due (and in a manner that leaves their ego at the door). With these 3 things together, I have never been disappointed in the ability to create a great team and environment that helps me do the last passion, take risk.  That risk can be on taking a role that I am not 100% certain that I am ready for, to make a decision with ambiguous data or to bring someone onto the team that has tremendous leadership potential but may need to learn some tactical/technical items that are new to their scope.

What are one or two really valuable lessons or skills you have learned as you’ve become more senior and promoted into executive management?

There are so many things that we learn as we move through our career and leadership journey.  My top two are:

1.  Realize that your authentic self always comes through, no matter how hard the efforts are to make it different.  Leadership is all about trust and if people cannot trust your style or approach it will not allow for the best potential to come from the team.

2.  Strong, active listening is a tremendous skill that takes practice. I love the quote: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. – George Bernard Shaw.  Leaders can come away with pure gold once they have made the time and space for active listening.  Your team wants to tell you things and they need you to listen with the intent of helping the situation to move forward.

What are two or three tips you can give to people that are looking to become more senior or take on leadership roles?

1.  Get into the habit of providing your team with frequent, actionable, objective feedback.  The more that you can do “in the moment” with tact and style, the better.  I find that the best people on my team stay when they know I have equal expectations from all team members.

2.  The larger that your leadership roles become, the less you can predict about what you will spend your time on.  Sounds counter-intuitive, but most leadership roles are dealing with topical, current internal and external items that change often.  For example, the amount of geo-political influence that is within business roles today or ability of social media to sway public opinion on a private or public corporation can change a leader’s focus overnight.

3. Take care of your team.  This is any leader’s most valuable item to develop, always check how much time you are putting into having your team’s back or understanding what energizes them.  Sometimes taking care of your team is letting them go, be known as an importer AND exporter of great talent!

Any parting wise words you wish to share with our audience?

Take risk (try different roles, different companies, learn something new). Understand that everyone has a story that you may or may not know about that impacts them day to day. Think with intent and purpose on how you’re setting up your team, your business partner, your leader and yourself to win.