MINETTE NORMAN CONSULTING
Minette Norman helps leaders cultivate inclusive organizations in which diverse teams can leverage their differences to achieve breakthrough success.
As we reimagine the workplace and are confronted every day with the challenges of human connection in a turbulent, virtual and hybrid world, we need compassionate, empathetic leaders who focus on creating safe, inclusive environments in which diverse teams can flourish. Minette Norman brings decades of leadership experience and a passion for connecting with people to help organizations overcome the inevitable challenges that arise in teams.
CONSULTING
Every organization is unique, with its own culture and norms. Minette will work with you to develop what your organization needs.
Sample consulting services include:
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY ASSESSMENTS & WORKSHOPS
Improving Psychological Safety in Teams (Fearless Organization scan and debrief sessions)
Decades of research point to psychological safety as the underpinning of inclusive and innovative teams that continuously learn and improve their performance. Using a survey tool based on the work of Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School, Minette will hold one or more debrief sessions to explore how your team can improve conditions for learning, inclusion, and innovation. She also leads a series of in-depth working sessions to help teams continuously improve their level of psychological safety.
Inclusive Leadership Workshop
Leaders set the tone for their organizations. This workshop gives leaders a new awareness of how their own behavior can contribute to a healthy, inclusive workplace where everyone has a sense of belonging and where innovation and new ideas can emerge.
Team Performance Workshop
Successful teams are teams that know how to communicate, to embrace diversity in all its forms, and to be open to new ideas. Minette will work with your organization to improve how team members interact with one another, getting comfortable with different points of view, cultures, and ways of working.
Inclusive Meetings Workshop
Meetings, where everyone spends so much of their time, embody a company’s culture. This experiential workshop helps participants gain awareness and practical skills for making all meetings more inclusive.
Leadership Coaching
Minette coaches leaders to operate at their highest potential by leveraging their strengths, recognizing areas for growth, and becoming more skillful in navigating professional challenges.
Meeting Facilitation
When you have a challenging meeting or simply need to ensure that you and all of your team members can fully participate in dialogue, Minette creates a comfortable and safe environment for everyone’s ideas and voices to be heard.
SPEAKING
Whether you're planning a live, in-person gathering or a virtual event, Minette will deliver an inspiring, engaging, and thought-provoking talk. She combines real-life stories, research, and actionable advice to spark new ideas and behavior in any audience. Book Minette to speak at your event through The Lavin Agency. Recent topics include:
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The Boldly Inclusive Leader: Champion of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
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Psychological Safety: The Foundation of Innovative and Engaged Teams
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Leading with Empathy: The Power of Human Connection
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An Unexpected Career: Lessons Learned Along the Way
"Minette was a tremendous keynote speaker at our Global Ready Conference. She established a unique bond with our audience despite the virtual format and spoke with authority on the subject matter."
Head of Marketing, Smartling
TESTIMONIALS
"What an incredible talk with us today! Thank you for being a trailblazer and for paving the way for so many to advance."
Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Extreme Networks
"Loved your session! We have barely scratched the surface with D&I and sessions like this help the org become more aware of the distance we have to go. Thank you for the amazing session!"
Chief Product Officer, Jumio
"Your inclusive meetings workshops made a huge impact. I find that the meetings I attend these days are far more intentional, inclusive, and successful than they were before."
Leadership Operations, Karat
"I just want to express my appreciation for that psychological safety debrief session. You did an amazing job of encouraging us, delivering meaning, and all the while moving us along. I can't think of a better way to spend two hours."
Director of Engineering, Equalize Health
"You’ve really changed my perspective on inclusion. This is what great leaders and people managers do, not the side hustle example you referenced. What an ah-hah moment!"
Sr. Employee Communications Specialist, VMware
"The talk could not have gone better. I had dozens of colleagues reach out after the talk, saying things like "wow that was really well done," "I could have listened to her much longer," and "she made everyone feel comfortable right away".
Head of Product Design, The Clorox Company
ABOUT MINETTE
Minette Norman brings decades of leadership experience in the software industry to her consulting business, which is focused on developing transformational leaders and highly functioning teams. Minette has extensive experience leading globally distributed, multi-cultural teams and believes that when groups leverage diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs and innovation happen. Her most recent position before starting her own consultancy was as Vice President of Engineering Practice at Autodesk, where she transformed how Autodesk developed software. Responsible for influencing more than 3,500 engineers around the globe, she focused on state-of-the-art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture.
Minette is a keynote speaker on topics of transformative leadership, creating inclusive workplaces, collaboration in the workplace, fostering innovation, and challenging the status quo.
Named in 2017 as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times, in 2018 as one of the YWCA Silicon Valley’s “Tribute to Women” Honorees, and as “Business Role Model of the Year” in the 2018 Women in IT/Silicon Valley Awards, Minette is a recognized leader with a unique perspective.
Minette holds degrees in Drama and French from Tufts University and studied at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.
BOOKS
Now Available!
The Psychological Safety Playbook
Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human
The Psychological Safety Playbook is the essential guide for leaders to foster psychological safety in their teams. While psychological safety sounds like an academic term, it is, above all, a deeply human experience: when we can ask a naïve question, propose a wild idea, or share our emotions, knowing we will not be embarrassed or marginalized—that’s when we experience psychological safety, and we can be our best and most creative selves.
Teams that have a high degree of psychological safety are the highest performing teams, the most inclusive teams, the teams that people want to be part of, and the teams that innovate. While there is a great deal of academic research about psychological safety, there has been a lack of actionable guidance for cultivating it. Karolin Helbig and Minette Norman developed The Psychological Safety Playbook to close this gap.
Coming Soon!
The Boldly Inclusive Leader
Transform Your Workplace (and the World) by Valuing the Differences Within
It’s time to leave behind the ideal of tough-minded, hard-driving leadership. The Boldly Inclusive Leader shows how being a compassionate leader who embraces diversity in all its forms will powerfully transform the workplace and the world.
Corporate leaders have awoken to the urgent need to build more diverse and inclusive workplaces, leadership teams, and boards of directors. But if today’s leaders are to realize the potential of a diverse workforce, they must challenge their current models of leadership and focus on creating an inclusive environment. This new imperative will require leaders at all levels of an organization to develop skills that have been traditionally undervalued, including empathy, curiosity, vulnerability, and the ability to create a psychologically safe workplace—this is boldly inclusive leadership.
MEDIA
Interviews with Minette Norman. For clips from keynote speeches, go Minette's speaker's page at The Lavin Agency
