A Conversation with Melody Meyer, Retired Chevron President and Board Director. Hosted by Women in Localization in partnership with MasterWord
Watch the inspiring interview with Melody Myers, who currently serves as a director on the boards of British Petroleum ABV National Oil Well and Energy Internet Corporation. She retired from Chevron after 37 years and was one of the very first women at Chevron, as well as one of the very first women in the industry to become president of an oil and gas corporation, Chevron Asia Pacific, and previously president of Chevron Energy Technology Company.
12 Key Takeaways from the Interview:
- Resilience and adaptability are important for building strong leadership skills and help solve complex problems.
- Create advantage from change. “When change happens in your business, your operation, your life, etc., instead of rebuilding or restoring just to have the same performance as before, try to be proactive and come up with new and innovative ways to run the business or to position the business that creates advantage.”
- Be a leader who always values the contributions of everyone. Businesses do not work without every single person giving 100%… it takes everybody.
- Integrate your career with your family. It’s important to have support from friends and family to be successful.
- Confidence with humility is very important. Have your views ready and, if you’re not heard, have the confidence to speak up and make sure you are heard.
- Be a lifelong learner. Learn everything you can. Be open to what you need to do better. Listen to people and use their advice. Apply it and don’t go back to the old ways of doing things.
- Choose not to be a victim. There is bias that all women experience but, if there is bias expressed, work harder and smarter to prove the value you bring to the table.
- Have the confidence to learn, take accountability, and adjust when you’re wrong. “You’re going to make mistakes and you have to be accountable for those and move on and learn from them.”
- Be a problem solver. It makes your company better, it makes your team better, and you will be successful if you are seen as a problem solver.
- Women helping other women will make a huge difference. This is probably the single biggest impact we can all make to get women into leadership roles.
- Design your career backwards. Success is different for everybody; whatever your goal is, think backwards from where you are today to where you want to be and try to help navigate your career to get to that level of success you want.
- Be a “T” thinker. T thinkers are very deep in technical expertise like engineering, math, science, communications, etc., but broad in their ability to connect relationships, partnerships, economics, and localization to be able to negotiate deals. The ability to intersect those two is imperative for all of us to solve the world’s complex problems.
