I know that behind every small and medium business, there is a passionate owner going all-in on their dreams. I’m honoured to share a message with such driven and visionary people like you. Let’s get to know each other, shall we?
Before joining TELUS, I owned my own restaurant and catering business. That experience led me to become deeply invested in empowering this generation and the next generation of business owners. That’s why I champion initiatives supporting diverse women entrepreneurs, like the Canadian Women’s Entrepreneur Awards, and organizations supporting underserved youth to identify and climb the career ladder of their choice, like Ladder 2 Rise.
If you’ve been in pivot-and-survive mode this year, an important piece of next year’s success puzzle can easily go missing: Inspiring high performance in ourselves and our teams. As someone who leads high-performance TELUS teams throughout Canada, South America and the Philippines, I’m sharing some tips you can take into 2023:
- Go beyond mentorship into trust and investment: Choose one high-performing employee and level them up. Some call this mentorship, but I break it down into trust and investment. How you operationalize this will depend on your business, but they need to see and feel your level of belief in them. Cultivating that feeling is where the high-performance magic begins.
- Have a “why day” and create a follow-up note: One of my Managers champions knowing every employee’s “why.” He firmly believes their “why” is the root of what motivates them. Knowing those motivations helps employee retention, performance and morale. Spend a day in a more relaxed setting to unearth it, then surprise them later with a “here’s why you matter here” note linking back to their “why.”
- Create an authentic rally cry: Give everyone a catchphrase to live by. Use repetition to make it stick. For example, I’ve built a collective team spirit by rallying employees around the idea of “One Team One Goal.” At the root of that catchphrase is my honest-to-goodness belief that we win and lose as a team, and I want to see all of us win more.
Suzanne Trusdale
VP of TELUS Small Business Solutions
As TELUS’ Vice President of Sales for Small Medium Business, Suzanne’s deeply invested in empowering diverse entrepreneurs and business owners to succeed.
She’s a strong advocate of diversity and inclusion; Suzanne serves as TELUS’ Global Co-chair for Connections (a network focused on the career growth of women at TELUS) and Executive Sponsor for Spectrum (TELUS’ resource group for 2SLGBTQIA+ and allied team members). She has won internal diversity and inclusion awards and currently mentors several high-potential leaders.
Suzanne gives back to her community through her involvement in 100 Women Who Care Oakville, Walk to Conquer Cancer, and Children’s Aid Foundation.
