You never know when your big break will come knocking. For Julie Sweet, it came just a month before she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of 2014, during a regular one-to-one with her boss—then-CEO of Accenture, Pierre Nanterme.
“At the end of the meeting, he closes his notebook and he pushes it aside, and he says to me, completely out of the blue… ‘I think you could run this place someday,’” Sweet recalled the pivotal moment in her career to Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast with Alyson Shontell.
It was a surreal moment for Sweet, who was serving as general counsel at the time and did not fit the mold of a typical CEO: she had a legal background, not a traditional business one, she was a woman in a company historically led by men, and unlike previous leaders, she had not spent her entire career at Accenture.
Even her boss admitted that jumping from general counsel to CEO was not a feasible jump, leveling that she would have to “run something else first.”
But instead of letting doubts slip out, the now-57-year-old leaned on the advice she once heard from Dina Dublon, the former CFO of JPMorgan Chase who served on Accenture’s board: “When someone gives you a stretch role… chances are that the person offering you a stretch role is as nervous or more nervous than you are. So, don’t say anything, like: Are you sure?”
Armed with that wisdom, Sweet did not flinch: “I looked at him and I said—with Dina in my head—’why, yes, I’d be interested. What did you have in mind?’”
And it set her career in motion toward the top of the ladder, leading the tech consulting firm’s North American practice in 2015, and eventually being named global CEO in 2019.
The power of confidence
Being confident in the workplace is something that extends beyond just being offered a job—it’s something that is needed every day from all workers.
In fact, Sweet said that confidence (as well as humility and excellence) is core to what makes a “great team” at the $150 billion company with a 770,000-strong workforce.
“We are constantly challenging each other and our assumptions,” she explained. “When you build a team that thinks that the status quo is challenging assumptions, embracing change, it means you’re constantly questioning. You don’t need to stop and have a big strategy… because you’re always working on the strategy.”
And having the confidence to ask questions doesn’t stop just because she’s in the C-suite—she calls asking for help one of her “superpowers.”
“I think the idea of being a deep learner at the top is really critical, and that is not usual in a lot of companies,” she said. “Because many times, the senior leaders, whether it’s the CEO or one level down, they’re the ones with all the wisdom. They’ve gotten these big jobs, and so the idea of training for leaders is often really odd to think about.”
That mindset began during her early years in the legal department, when she admits she wasn’t super tech savvy—and had to ask for guidance.
“I figured out pretty quickly that if I wanted to be the business leader with legal experience, I had to deeply understand the business,” Sweet said.
It’s a skill that ultimately helped her stick out from the pack—and be in line for the top CEO job: “transparency builds trust,” she added. “Because the more value you can contribute [to] your company, the more likely you’re going to get that best next job.”
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