Leaders Unscripted

Conversations with leaders about the challenges they’ve faced and what they’ve learned.

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24: Being CTO While Navigating a Disability with Pleo’s CTO, Meri Williams

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When your identity is so strongly focused around leadership, anything that challenges your identity can be a world-altering experience.

Pleo’s Meri Williams has been through the reinvention of her leadership style after her Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome diagnosis, cementing her role as a self-empathetic CTO.

Meri joins me on Leaders Unscripted to discuss the balance of her CTO role with her diagnosis, and her wisdom for those finding themselves newly diagnosed while leading.

This Episode Covers:

  • The notable challenges of a CTO role
  • Balancing logistics with emotions
  • Harnessing the collective excellence of an engineering team
  • Meri’s numerous medical conditions, and changing her leadership style to suit
  • Offering a more valuable version of yourself less frequently
  • Making a mental change to handle pain & suffering

Episode Highlights:

“I'm usually brought in by the board or by the exec team to make some change happen, and it's not always all the way down through the engineering team that that change is needed yet.” - 5:15 - Meri Williams
“I really believe that phase of business, or what's going on at the company, is so important to know as a leader. Where am I good?” - 7:35 - Suzan Bond
“The most rewarding part is a combination of harnessing the brilliance of a bunch of engineers, and then making that translate into something for the business.” - 15:00 - Meri Williams
“It was the day of the GDS Christmas party, and I wasn’t looking particularly happy. A lot of people were worried about why and I was like, ‘It’s nothing to do with the party I promise’. I ended up being diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome because I'd had 100 shoulder dislocations in two years.” - 21:15 - Meri Williams
“One of my team, who I’d just promoted, said ‘You should have stayed home today. We are not better for having you at 20% of who you can be, we need you at 100%. We'd rather have you for three days at 100%, than five days at 20%’. That made me realise that I needed to really change my approach.” - 29:00 - Meri Williams
“This hard-working, high achieving element of myself was such a huge part of who I was. Then when I couldn't just do those extra hours, or just finish that over the weekend - it felt like an attack on my identity.” - 34:35 - Meri Williams
“For every day, think about how pain is mandatory, but suffering is optional. What can you do to help reduce your suffering, and suffering of those around you. Then the hardest part of this is accepting limitations on yourself.” - 45:35 - Meri Williams

Links & References:

Constellary: https://www.constellaryhq.com/

Suzan Bond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanbond/

Meri Williams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meriwilliams/

Pleo: https://www.pleo.io/en

Pleo (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/company/pleo-company/