Meet Nicole Balkenbusch

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicole Balkenbusch. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicole below.

Nicole, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I grew up in the Midwest of the USA in a stereotypical household – my Dad, a lawyer, and my Mom, a teacher, had myself and my younger brother. I’m 3rd generation Greek decent – my great grandparents came over on a boat with little money and few connections, in the hope of building a better life. My maternal grandmother, Sophia, only knew Greek when she started elementary school and eventually taught my great-grandmother English. On my father’s side, my grandfather was 1 of 4 children, who were taught they could be anything if they worked hard enough. Being the older sister and one of the first grandchildren, I had many aunts/uncles and relatives who attended every sporting event or arts performance, always loudly cheering me on “you go, Cole!” above the rest of the quiet clappers; while I was embarrassed at first, I learned to love performing for my family and having them give me positive words of affirmation. My parents and grandparents imparted on me to be a “tall, proud Greek girl and to always speaking up for myself and others.” I am tall -5′ 9″ and was this tall at 11 years old. All of the women in my family are tall and when I bent down to make myself less tall than boys my age, they would tell me to “stand up tall, don’t be afraid of who you are” which gave me the confidence at a young age to own my full self. While I had the typical teenager awkward years, I always knew I had my family’s support, which allowed me to try new areas and motivated me to work hard to excel. While my Dad worked and my Mom had chosen to stop working for years to raise us children, they ran the household 50/50 – it wasn’t “his money” or “her house” – everything was theirs/together, which allowed me to have a positive role models about how a relationship should operate. This allowed me to have the confidence to speak up to bullies at school, raise my hand in hard classes to answer a question or ask for help and if a boyfriend didn’t treat me as an equal, it was a short-lived relationship. When I was scared of public speaking, my parents forced me to speak in speeches, whether at church or in the local Rotary club, which I hated at the time but now looking back, I am so thankful they did so. One time, I 100% forgot my speech, which had to be fully memorized (no notes, podium to hide behind, nothing!); my parents didn’t negatively put me down or console me – they simply asked what happened and what could be better next time. I have learned that being high energy, outspoken (many call me loud), tall and Greek (so I talk with my hands) is a strength and when I have been given feedback in the business world that sometimes I can be “too much,” I simply reply with “thank you” and a smile. I am so thankful my entire family supported me as I grew up, built up my confidence and gave me opportunities to learn, fail and succeed – I now try to do the same for my two young daughters.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am fortunate to have started my finance career at Procter & Gamble, where they invest so much time in developing talent, being known as one of the top companies who have so many executives/C-Suite leaders at other companies. I had managers who took the time to teach me about corporate America, how I could bring my best self to work, showed me the importance of how one gets work done, not just the results that are delivered (the approach can sometimes matter more than the outcome). After 11 years and 4 relocations to make a dual-career marriage work, I decided to take the jump to join Amazon. I felt like this was a major risk to my career – Amazon is known for Deliver Results, moving fast, working hard and focusing on innovation. At first, I felt like a fish out of water – the approach mattered, but the results mattered more. It felt more competitive vs collaborative and in my first year, I wanted to quit 5 times. Fortunately, I built up a good network and had a mentor pull me to a different organization where I could thrive. I stayed in that broader organization for 5 years, having a variety of finance roles and also taking advantage of the opportunity to join a leadership development team, where I obtained my executive coaching certification. In 2023, I realized that I was tired of having “or”-type choices… to be in finance or leadership development, to deliver results or care about people, to have a successful career or see my family. I chose to be in the driver’s seat and decided to make “and” my new approach to my career. I re-joined finance leadership and told my manager that I would continue leadership development; I started my own company, COLES LTD, which focuses on Leveraging Talent to Deliver Results; I still spent quality time with my family as I accepted a bigger scope role which involved travel. There are many times we are told to “make a choice and stick with it” – I don’t accept it. I believe two things can be true – you can care about people and get stuff done; you can have a successful corporate career and have a side hustle where you meet people from different industries; you can travel the world, have new experiences and teach your children about different cultures. Many years ago when my children were young, I created a personal legacy to be a “strong business woman who helps others break down barriers;” this is my north star to guide all decisions I make in career and life.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Ask questions and listen – Being early in my 20s, I thought I knew everything and wanted to run circles around everyone else. That request due in 2 weeks? I’ll get it done in 1 week. You want me to go to a new role even though I think I already know everything about it? I guess I’ll go, but I think I know better. I had managers who guided and coached me to ask questions and then truly listen – which involves slowing down to actually hear the answers, internalize what was said and then determine how best to execute. I started to treat new roles as learning experiences vs “check the box until the next level” – what are the new skills I could learn? Experiences I could have? People I could meet? I started to think of the first year of a role as the ramp-up/learning year – how I could listen, learn and patiently focus on doing the best I could. And then the 2nd/3rd years as the ability to truly deliver big, bold results and make changes, because I had learned how things truly got done.

2. Operate your work life as if personal doesn’t exist and your personal life as if work doesn’t exist – I had a mentor tell me this once and I didn’t really understand it at the time, but I’ve found it to be true in the long run. When I really wanted a bigger role and potential promotion, but also wanted a baby – I chose to still try for both and then all things happened in the same year. When I needed to move to support my husband’s career, I didn’t want to accept that it would have to end my career at P&G and asked for support to make it a win-win. When my younger daughter needed extra support and a new, bigger role was offered – we took a family vote to decide how best to handle the opportunity (which I did take and with extra outsourcing happening to help my personal life). You want to take that big vacation and be gone for a long time? With advanced planning, it doesn’t matter what’s happening at work – take it.

3. Clearly and boldly communicate your goals, what’s important to you, what you can offer and ask for help – I think of a career as a “S-curve” – there are times you accelerate and there are times to breathe/rest. Stress, then rest. Communicating with your leadership and network those times where you feel ready to push/accelerate and take on something new and then times you need to “pause” is critical to lasting through a long career. I had a manager tell me once that I couldn’t sprint a marathon – I thought I could then (maybe in my 20s) but now I realize the importance of stress, then rest. I’ve never once stopped saying I want to progress in my career and I’ve equally communicated when I needed to take a break – my mentors know where I stand and what is important to me. A new VP starts and asks how they can help – I communicate 1 specific, tactical area and also where I could use support in my career; they mention people typically aren’t that bold – I say that if I don’t say what I want, how will others know? Especially as a woman, others may infer on my behalf – I never want anyone making choices for me.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

I’m a big believer of using your strengths – you should choose roles that allow ~70% to use your strengths and the remaining 30% is your area to grow/learn. I’ve taken two assessments which allow me to evaluate new opportunities in my career – StrengthsFinder 2.0 (CliftonStrengths now) and Working Genius (by Pat Lencioni). With these 5 strengths and 2 working geniuses, I know which types of roles I typically excel in and those which may be more challenging for me. I’ve gotten feedback that sometimes I trust my team or delegate too much work, that I should dig in more – instead of taking this advice and going to the extreme of getting into everything, I will then use discernment (working genius type) and communication (clifton strength) to be intentional about which areas I will go deeper in vs stay at a higher level. This allows me to demonstrate that I know where certain opportunities lie, as I’m intentional on how to show this is not a show-stopper or barrier to long term success, I have found my own values (created in partnership with an executive coach) – Empowered, Valued, Growth, High Quality (Relationships + Results) and Structure allow me to communicate with others about what is important to me, where I truly thrive (vs survive) at work and how I invest time with others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.colesltd.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-balkenbusch/

Image Credits

Jose Chavarria, NextUp