Can you share some insights into your childhood and how your upbringing influenced your passion for leadership and marketing?

My full name is Ntombi Mhangwani. Ntombi means girls only. I am the fifth daughter to my mom and father who have five daughters. I am the youngest but I do come from a family of very strong, opinionated, outspoken, successful women. I believe I was born a leader. Why do I say that from a very young age when I was in school, I found myself either leading in the playground where we were playing with friends and giving instructions as to what who should do and how they should do it. Or I was assisting others, let’s say, who fell.

I was always that person who was willing to help take my time to share a lunchbox if somebody didn’t have it then I became a prefect at a young age at school. I remember I was a netball prefect and then I was either the head of a social club. I was also the president of my interactive club which is part of the Rotary International Circle of Friends. And then I became the head of the debating club or I was a member of the wildlife cap.I was just always in some sort of position where I could influence people.

And when I was going through it at a young age, I must honestly say I didn’t realize that I was destined to be a greater leader in my career path. I think the leadership position that stands out for me the most, one I was elected to be the President or the head of the Netball team and yet everybody knew that I wasn’t necessarily the strongest netball player. But the person and the teammate that was the strongest, a bold player did not exhibit the right behaviors. So in hindsight when I look back I realize that leaders are not selected because they are necessarily the strong or the base that are particular sports. It’s a combination of being able to play sports.

It’s a combination of having the right attitude, it’s the combination of being able to inspire your team members and also you being able to guide team members to pull together to work together for the good of the team so that you win as a team. So You can be the best player, but without showing up with the correct behaviors, you may not necessarily be the correct leader, and you may not be selected.

The other leadership position that stands out to me when I was in school was when I was elected to be the deputy hate girl of my school. I remember at the time my principal told me that I actually received the most votes to be head goal but they were going to make me deputy. I suspect this was linked to the fact that I had a working mother who was unable to work at the tech shop during school hours and I accepted the position that I was offered and within that position I was able to truly show that people who come from my background which was Soweto during South Africa’s very racial past, also able to be appointed and selected as leaders because it was the first time the school had put somebody that he liked me in such a position.

Those are my leadership positions at school. When I went to university, I went on to be a member of the student representative council, the SRC. I went on to be appointed as a subordinate which is the person that looks after and facilitates the peaceful living environment and the management of the girls and the residents I was staying in.I moved on to being the warden of a race which is being the housemother for about 75 goals in the race where I was residing as well and many many more positions.

I think the person who inspired me in all honesty is my parents. Number one, my mother was a very strong, bold woman who showed leadership in everything she did. Leadership in how she raised us, leadership in how she got us to believe in ourselves, leadership in trying to help us understand that our circumstances and the fact that we’re living in a shake does not determine our outcome at the end of the day. So she was constantly inspiring, feeding positive messages and telling us to believe in ourselves.

The other role model, like I said, is my father. My father was a bi-profession, a playwright and an actor who studied at the Shakespearean School of the Arts in the height of racial prejudice and in the height of a part date in South Africa. My father was selected and given a scholarship to go and study at the Shakespearean School of the arts, which was a very unique situation for a black South African in those days, who got a chance to study overseas and not only after studying, Do you also get a chance to work overseas, taking South African artists, plays, working overseas and being away for a year at a time and us as the family seeing him for maybe one month or three months in a year.

So watching my father travel the world making an income to bring back for us to be able to go to school, for us to have some sort of food on the table and everything else and he was saving up to make sure he could buy us a home so that we could move out of the shack. I saw that if my father could have the ability to travel the world and not be confined to the streets of Soweto, like some of his other colleagues and friends that he had grown up with, if my father could do it surely I could do it. If my father could manage a group of 50 or more artists around the world what would stop me. So I think I had great role models in my parents who led and showed up with the right behaviors and we saw them in roles where they were actually showing up as role models for me and my sisters.

Therefore, rising up into a leadership role is not difficult when you have role models such as parents who encourage you to show you how it is done teach you the right behaviors guide you, give you feedback and I was blessed to be in a family where we were allowed to be outspoken, share our thoughts all built on the foundation of respect and manner of approach in terms of how you speak to people. So that is why I say I was born a leader.

However, the experiences I’ve had along the way, along the journey in terms of the experiences I had at school. The failures that I may have experienced in my life, the successes that I may have celebrated in my career path as a student, as a professional, each and every experience that I’ve had, that the honor and the pleasure of walking through has actually helped to either smoothen and after my rough ages, improve me as a leader, to teach me as a leader and also refine me as a human being that connects with other human being emotionally that is able to influence and inspire and get other people to believe in themselves. My passion for leadership and my love of understanding my strengths and my God-given and talents resulted in me completing a PhD in leadership focusing on innovation and technology. I am now a Doctor of Philosophy in the Management of Leadership. I am a Doctor of philosophy in the management of innovation and technology and my focus was on building a leadership model for leaders to lead in a digital world. I looked at what type of leader needs to manage teams in the 4th, 5th and 6th industrial revolution. What are the roles they need to show? So I’m as and what are the behaviors that they need to display. So I think I’ve come full circle from being a leader, from being a leader in the playground to completing a PhD and building a leadership model that illustrates how leaders should be relevant in the fourth and fifth industrial revolution.

What inspired you to pursue a career in marketing and how did your journey lead you to your current role as a CMO?

When I was in university one of the things I was majoring in was journalism. When I majored in journalism, one of the courses we concluded was a course on public relations and communications. I remember distinctly sitting in that class and thinking to myself, I absolutely want to work in the space, the public relations space. I was passionate about what they were telling me it was, what the focus was, the type of people that needed to work in the space, how you would be the spokesperson for companies, how you would be the face of the company, how you would have to speak on behalf of the organization, Manage its reputation.

Everything they were telling me about public relations and communications was so exciting to me. I decided to follow that path. When I then left university, I joined an organization that was a public relations consulting and I worked there for a while. I was then asked by my university to come back and to join them working for the journalism department looking after public relations and communications. I worked for my university for a wonderful four years and then moved on to work at British American tobacco, where the communications and the public relations I was doing was starting to merge with marketing. A lot of the work we did at BAT could not be done without marketing.

I had even greater experience of that when I joined the telecoms provider MTA, where PR and communications was residing within the marketing team and the emphasis was on delivering integrated marketing and communications plans where comms and marketing were working together. So that exposure to marketing at MTA and large telecommunications giant helped me to start understanding what marketing was about, how it works alongside public relations and communications and helped me to build a vision and a dream board to say I would like to actually be a master and a specialist in both PR and in marketing. And what I loved about the marketing aspect was the creativity, the ability to come up with briefs and articulate what the challenges were in my organization so that my agency could bring the ideas to the table that would help to solve for those challenges as well and the ability for creativity that is produced by a number of agencies, marketers working together to be able to touch the lives of consumers and connect with them in such an emotional way that it leads to them buying the product, the service, or buying into that particular advertising campaign and actually resulting in an action and this action results in revenue for the organization.

And the most phenomenal experience for me was when I worked on the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa looking after the marketing PR and media initiatives on behalf of MTA. And I just saw how in all the stadiums everybody was shouting our word our logo our campaign and how successful it was
not only from connecting with human beings and the stadiums and the consumers during the World Cup but being successful in terms of generating revenue which gave a return on investment to the sponsorship that we had actually applied for and signed up for marketing for me is like music singing and coming out of my heart. I love the ability to stretch my mind to better understand what is the challenge and being able to use words to write and articulate what the challenge is and then being able to use words to say, “This is what we believe the solution needs to be, However, we want to work with our partners to find the best solution as well.

So marketing for me is the beauty to help organizations move from a point of pain where they are the bleeding, revenue or bleeding customers or losing customers and not not necessarily being seen as the relevant partner by the consumer outside to a point where marketing infiltrates partners with the business and finds the solution to reposition, re-articulate, re-communicate and re-engage and reconnect with consumers in such a way that they buy into the brand again, they partner with the brand again, they choose the brand again,

They trust the brand again and thereby resulting in the action of buying and buying leads to a new, new, new generation. And this is what I absolutely love about marketing. People sometimes don’t realize it is the glue that pulls together the ecosystem in an organization for revenue to be realized as well.

I absolutely love how marketing is music that brings me to life every morning when I wake up. It is the music that I tap and sing as I drive in the car. It’s the music that I tap and sing as I lead the team. It’s the music that also shouts out in my head as we generate creativity. It just creates harmony and helps and builds for successful jobs, successful revenue and also successful organizations.

As a leader, what are the key principles you live by and how do you inspire and mentor the next generation of female leaders?

My purpose in life is to lift as I rise. People may see me now and be inspired by me as a leader. They may look at me now as I am a phenomenal transformational leader. But that wasn’t always the case. I was not perfect, I’m a human being, I’ve made many mistakes in my lines. The difference is I’ve had managers and leaders who have believed in me, believed in my potential and they took a chance on me. I’ve had leaders who’ve hired me despite HR saying I don’t think I should hire her. I’ve had leaders who’ve invested in me in terms of hiring a coach to work with me. And I’ve had the honour of working with an executive coach, the same coach for the past 13 years and the same executive coach became my PhD supervisor and we are now writing a book about the power of coaching and the relationship between the coach and the coach she as well because I’ve seen how coaching has changed my life and turned me into the
transformational leader that I am. So because somebody took a chance on me I am committed and intentional about supporting women who show up in a courageous way, who speak their mind and say, ‘I too want to be a leader.’ I am investing in them by providing coaching and directing from my personal time,
but also taking funding from IP&L to make sure they get to work with a professional executive coach like I worked with a professional executive coach.

So I’m investing in them and in those coaching sessions, I allow them to talk about their frustrations both professionally, both personally. They lack understanding of me and how they can better learn to work with me. They are challenges with their teammates, how they can learn to work better with their teammates, how they can collaborate better, innovate better, increase productivity. I invest in coaching for individuals in every single team and in every single organization. I have worked for as long as I have been a marketing director/CMO because that opportunity was given to me, therefore I ensure I give that opportunity back to people I work with in every organization. I also go as far as providing coaching for people who are not members of my marketing team. If somebody is struggling in an organization and I feel coaching is the answer that will assist them help to open up their mind, help to actually improve their ability to thrive, I will also provide resources for those people who are not my team members to gain access to coaching as well. I spend my weekends giving my time to young people, to tell stories. Storytelling is powerful in inspiring young people, by inspiring people who are still junior in their career and they will look up to you and they say we want to be like you, but they think you may have been born with the silver spoon in your mouth.

So I tell the story of where I began my struggles, my wins, my successes, my failures, what I would I would redo again if I was given the chance. I make sure I do all of that. And in that, I believe I am raising a generation of informed people, of people who know that there will be highs, there will be lows, they will be good, they will be bad, but if you have the right, can do attitude, you have the determined spirit and you are intentional about winning, you will always win.

How do you see the role of women evolving in corporate leadership and What steps should organisations take to improve gender diversity at executive level?

Women will succeed if they want to succeed. I believe emotional intelligence is a skill that women need to truly understand and engage in. So that in understanding how to manage their emotions, managing the emotions of others, how to communicate with different stakeholders in different environments in different contexts, it means they will know how to sell themselves in the corporate world. There is no point in us going with an aggressive attitude to the boardroom, to the Executive table, the morning to be included when we have not proved ourselves yet. But yes, you are hired because they believe you are talented.
But like every single individual, after being hired, you still need to prove yourself.
Proving yourself did not end at the interview. Proving yourself did not end when you were given the contract for the job offer. You now need to start the job, you need to prove yourself and you need to show that you can speak the business language that will result in a woman being invited to be part of the
boardroom being invited to be part of the Exco table. Women need to understand that believing that my work speaks for itself is insufficient to get us to the decision-making table.

We need to be able to influence upwards. We need to be able to have conversations, comfortable and uncomfortable conversations with leaders who we know are going to be having discussions about us when we are not in the room. Women need to be able to sell themselves, sell their work, show the value that they are bringing to the organization and I believe as women if we are able to achieve this then we will be changing the corporate landscape by being courageous enough to speak up courageous enough to approach stakeholders that we know we don’t want to be communicating with. bold enough to sell the ideas that we have and also humble enough to show the results of the work that we do and the positive long-term impact the results of the work we do have on
the organization. If we speak the business language, use emotional intelligence.

We will be able to connect with the audience that makes the decisions in the organization and we will be the decision makers, we will be part of it. We can argue that gender equality, gender diversity are important. But it is an education process for us to take the journey with our male colleagues to educate them about the value we bring, the results we deliver, and why us as women partnering with them would be beneficial for the organization. If we
We assume that they will just understand that without having had the conversations with them and assuming that they know how to speak on our behalf without having us as women educate them on what it is. We want to be speaking about ourselves, rather than them speaking for us, then we are mistaken. We will not be able to change the corporate landscape, but
And we need to partner with our male colleagues to achieve the state of Nevada we want to see as women.

The marketing landscape is constantly changing. How do you ensure Vodokom remains innovative and relevant in such a competitive industry?

I’m absolutely passionate about understanding trends in my field, reading, researching, reaching, writing, attending seminars and understanding how my job may be disrupted in the future. How my team may be relevant or irrelevant if we do not make sure we embrace the trains, the innovation, the technology that comes with the digital world and digital economy that we are working with. So I ensure that I remain relevant by following the fathers who are known as the gurus in the sectors that I work in. I am reading journals. I am following top researchers, be it there from Accenture, I am doing my own research around what is the latest technology.

How will AI impact my life, my working life, but also my personal life?

I am constantly unlearning to relearn. I’m constantly asking questions, constantly searching to make sure that I remain relevant and these new lessons that I learned every day, I pass on and use in my own organization and I also upskilled my team to make sure that they remain relevant. The days of saying you have a job for life are gone. The days of saying this is how we’ve always done it and it’s always worked. We need to make sure we are constantly disrupting ourselves,
unlearning to relearn reading up on the latest trends, embracing innovation and applying what the data says. There’s no point in getting the data translating it but not applying it. I am a future focused leader, I am a transformational leader that wants to always be at the cutting edge of trends, technology and innovation. and I bet you I love that and deliver it absolutely every single day.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in your career and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge that I faced in my career was when a young lady reporting into me accused me of being a terrible leader, being racist, being unable to do the job, being an alcoholic and so many more things. She went and she spoke to the HR director about this and one of the organizations I worked with and I was charged with 13 counts of whatever she had said. Now because I knew I had done nothing wrong, I asked that organization to hire an independent consultant to investigate the claims made by the same lady. And of course it turned out that the claims were false and what she had said it was based out of anger that I had not allowed her to take a trip to Boston in America to complete a social media course.

The decision for her not to go to America had nothing to do with me. That was a decision the company made where they had cut all the travel for people in the organization. So I’ve learnt that we were not all raised by the same family, same parents and some people believe they are in a better position of privilege than you are and when things do not go their way. They are able to go and speak ill of you, despite the fact that the truth will always rise to the fore at the end of the day.

My greatest disappointment was a fellow woman telling lies about me in my work environment and threatening my career, my livelihood and my reputation. My greatest disappointment was my organization before asking me for my opinion, believing her and charging me. And when it turned out that in fact the allegations were false and the organization owed me an apology. My greatest disappointment was my organization apologizing but then asking me to stop the deformation suit that I had against the same who had lied against me. But I think, and South Africa, we are resilient because we realize our racial past sometimes raised its ugly head.

Even when we think we have reached the state of equality and a place where both black and white people in South Africa can work together. We realize some people are still hanging on to the past and struggling to change because change is a process. So I used this experience, this very unfortunate and painful experience and I talked about it all the time about how it wasn’t necessarily about the woman being awful to another woman. It’s the privilege some people feel entitled to and what they will do to demand they are put in position number one because of the privilege they believe they are entitled to.

And I tell the story because often people in corporate are going through terrible times and when they look at leaders at the top they think we’ve never had a tough time. It’s always been a smooth ride. We don’t know what hardship is. I tell the story because every leader that is sitting at the top at some point in their lives worked on a set of hot calls to get there, had to fall and had to get up again, had to fail and had to try again to succeed again. And actually what happened with this young lady lying about me and accusing me and the organization charging me is probably the best thing that could have ever helped me because it taught me that organizations can sometimes make mistakes.

They tend to claim that they will always be ethical, not take sides. And I’ve learnt that is not the truth. I’ve learnt that life can be political. I’ve learned that people can stab you in the back. I’ve learnt that not everybody is going to like you and sometimes they don’t have to have a reason. They just don’t like you. And I’ve learned that the most important thing is for me to be happy with who I am. Lead a life that is filled with principles, solid foundation of respect for self, of respect for others and lead with kindness every day and forgive myself every day when I am not perfect. So I thank the person who laid about me. I thank the organisation that charged me. I think the independent consultant that investigated this case, because this full experience made me a better leader, a stronger leader, and telling the story to others helps to grow other leaders as well.

As a TED speaker, you have a strong voice in storytelling. How can brands and individuals tell you storytelling effectively to drive change?

Storytelling is powerful in getting people to shift from one state to the next state. Often when people step into the boardroom and they are talking about numbers or big engineering opportunities, big engineering feats and most of the time not every single person sitting around the decision making table is an accountant, not an engineer. And in a situation where you need to get a decision made, a decision that is positive for you.

It is probably the best idea to use storytelling, paint a picture, to help the accountant, the lawyer, the engineer, the artist sitting in that decision-making table to get you from the state where you are at to the decision that you need. When you use the power of storytelling, people can see the picture. They can be carried along the journey. They can see the highs and lows of the journey in the story. They can see the desired solution you are seeking and eventually they can have the ability to give you a yes or a no because you were able to tell the story and connect with them in a way that they could relate to, understand the language and connect with. Storytelling helps individuals win.

Storytelling helps to get you to the required and desired decision that you want. So never take it for granted that everyone sitting around the table understands what you’re talking about. Often people sit there don’t understand and they don’t say a word they don’t say a word but when you use storytelling you transport them you take them to another world and you can enter them.

How do you manage work-life balance in such a high-pressure growth and what advice do you give to professionals striving for the same?

I love being present and I love being intentional about being present when I’m at work and focused at work. When I’m at home, I’m focused at work, I’m focused at home. I don’t think there’s ever such a thing as the perfect balance, but what I focus on and what I choose on is being present for every single environment that I find myself in and operating in and spending time in. So when I’m with my family, I am listening, I’m focused, I’m not on my phone, I’m not on emails, I’m not trying to do two things at the same time. Family time is family time. I’m intentional about that and they have my full and divided attention. When I’m at work, work time is work time, they have my full and when I leave home and it’s time for me to spend time with my partner, he gets my and divided attention because I need all those different worlds to integrate, to merge, and to be that melting pot that creates who I am as an individual. I can’t say one takes priority over the other.

One is more important than the other. They are all important and I’m intentional about engaging in each of them equally when I am there with every single world with every single individual, with every single environment, been family, work, my friends, my church, my God, I’m intentional about being present and consciously present so I can engage and grow so that guys I would give to people is focusing on work alone is not going to make your happy person. Focusing on family without work is not going to help you grow. You need to make decisions that make you a whole person and being a whole person is a combination of laughter with friends and family. Love with friends and family, growth and being stretched at work and you need all of these lives to come together. So you need to choose what your balance is.

Are you intentional about connecting emotionally with each of the opportunities that each of the people you are with? You make that choice. Nobody can make that choice for you. You make that choice for you. What works for me may not work for you. But I know, for me to be happy, for me to be authentic, wholehearted, and I need all my worlds to be a melting pot that come into unison and make me happy.

What emerging trends do you believe will define the future of marketing consumer engagement in the next five years?

Marketers can no longer believe that delivering a beautiful marketing campaign that people love is sufficient. You need to justify that you spent two or twenty million grand on a marketing
in campaign and what was the return to the organization. What revenue did it bring back
in what conversions did it lead to, what deals did it have to close, marketers have to start
improving return on investment.

Marketers need to use the power of AI to introduce to introduce higher levels of productivity. How can AI assist us with admin? How can AI reduce the time to market that we used to submit? How can AI help us to connect with our customers better? How can AI and data help us to improve and generate personalization for our customers so that they feel we’re communicating with them.

It’s not a pre and you know you’re just spreading the same thing every way. How are people receiving personalized, as well. Marketers need to understand that we need to show return on investment and we need to show that our activity results in revenue. We need to show that our activity results in deals being closed. We need to show that our activity results in conversions. We need to show that we are using technology to improve our go to market, take our go to market processes. We also need to show that that personalization we are introducing is actually creating stickiness with our clients as well. Marketers can no longer say I just do marketing and events. You are a Revenue Contributing Person in the organization, your department is a Revenue Contributing ecosystem that forms part of the broader ecosystem and you need to see yourself as wearing a sales ad as well.

What advice would you give to young professionals the spirit to lead and marketing branding and corporate and leadership.

The leadership advice I always give to people is to understand self first. If you don’t understand yourself, you can’t work with other people. You can’t coach other people. If you don’t have self-awareness about your strengths and your weaknesses, your areas of development,
you’re going to struggle to pass on knowledge to other people. So understanding who you are, what you stand for, will enable other people to be able to understand you and when you’re communicating, they will understand the intent with which your work comes with. When people understand your intent, they are willing to work with you. When people understand your intent, they are willing to trust you. When people understand your intent and know that you are a results driven individual, they are willing to trust you and give you a chance and give you an investment that they know may or may not succeed with you trying to innovate, experiment and try new things. When you have self-awareness and you know yourself. You’re confident, you’re able to articulate the value proposition you want people to buy into. You are able to give people to trust you and you are able to get people to believe in you. This leads to you being a leader that is able to inspire because when people have put into you you are seen as an inspiration. When people see your results, you are seen as somebody
that you’re able to influence upwards. When people see that you are who you say you are and you walk the talk. People will follow you for days and days and years and years Because you lead with authenticity and you lead with integrity. But the foundation is you having self-awareness knowing who you are and when you articulate that journey, the risk will fall into place. leading with integrity comes with no value. You are. What do you need?

What impact do you hope to leave in your industry and what are your future aspirations beyond your power and power?

So I am a leader. I have a transformational leader who has been blessed with the ability to connect with people. I have the ability to make people listen. I have the ability to inspire. I have the ability to get people to believe in themselves. I have the ability to stretch people in my teams and have the ability to give them big dreams. The legacy I want to give behind is people saying I’m aware I’m at because I worked with the leader called Dr. Ntombi Maghwanin and she trusted me and it didn’t matter how many mistakes I made, she kept believing in me and I’m aware I’m at fault because of her. She invested in me, she gave me a coat to work with. She gave me advice when I didn’t want to hear it. which gave me feedback when I didn’t want to receive it. I want people to say Dr. Ntombi Mangwani taught me about getting comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. She taught me about being brave and humble to receive feedback that was both positive and negative and from this feedback I’ve been able to evolve, I’ve been able to grow, I’ve been able to unlearn and relearn. I want people to be able to say when they speak of leaders who are lifting as they arrive, as they rise, that leader is no me, that is the legacy I want to lead. I want people to say they connected with me. They showed they saw me leading with empathy. They saw me leading with passion. They saw me and she was leading with integrity, they saw how I was transformational in allowing them to make mistakes. I want them to say she fought for me even when I didn’t deserve it because she saw something in me that I did not see in myself. I am a leader that will lead organizations. I am a leader that will lead communities. And I know one day I will be a CEO that will lead a a phenomenal organization that will change and improve the lives of people in South Africa.
I will be a CEO. Thank you.