IWD2024: Inspiring Women of Spectris - Tamlynn Deacon

To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8th March, the companies in the Spectris Group are coming together to show own commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging. For the next fortnight, we’ll be featuring ‘Inspiring Women of Spectris’, sharing their stories and their advice for women and men to support achieving the goal of true inclusion. Today, meet Tamlynn.

1. Please summarise who you are, your role and where you’re based (which part of Spectris and where in the world) I’m someone who believes in other people and wants to help them be the best version of themselves. My role is the Director of Cloud Support and Cyber in HBK’s Digital team. It’s a role that touches all aspects of HBK – from our colleagues to our customers. Technology such as AI offers immense potential for a business like ours, aggregating and accelerating data acquisition and insights analysis, but we need to grasp the opportunities in a co-ordinated and safe way. I’m based in the UK but originally from South Africa and previously have lived in the US, I love to travel so you might find me taking advantage of work from anywhere.
2. What sparked your interest in all things Digital, and can you share a bit about your journey leading up to your current role? I never had an interest in Digital initially, but I was getting frustrated in my first corporate position and felt I could give more. So I applied for other internal roles, and that brought me to working in Risk and Governance within the Investment Platform team at the company. It was something I knew nothing about initially, but I like a challenge. I adapted what I did know and asked countless questions, which helped me build my network of trusted advisors. In time this network gave me an opportunity to move into Digital.
3. What do you enjoy most about working in Digital and your specific role? I’m someone who is keen to help people get to where they want to be in life so showing how Digital and Cyber Security can be a business enabler and helping people to achieve what they need to do to drive value, and not see Digital as just an IT cost, is now my favourite part of my role.
4. What’s been your greatest achievement during your career? Hands down, this has been being brave enough to start my own business when I had no business doing it. I was not qualified and had no idea what I was doing. It was scary, but I knew I wanted to disrupt how companies were being run and how women were being treated. I wanted to help people passionate about cyber get into the industry and show that putting people first, being kind, caring and not just making it about the money could succeed. I gave up a good role in a respected company, because I was frustrated. I learned so much about myself in the process.
5. What advice would you give to a woman starting their career today? When good opportunities present themselves, say yes and then figure out how you can do it. Take calculated risks and believe in yourself, there are going to be challenges and you will fail at some of them, be ok with that too, after all you will also learn and how can knowledge be a failing? Perception is reality and it’s so important how you perceive yourself. If you see yourself a certain way, you start to believe it, belief becomes behaviour, behaviour becomes habit and other people’s perception of you will start to shift too.
6. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? I am going to flip this one and tell you the worst advice I was given, by a woman I had asked to be my mentor – and that was “To succeed in a male dominated industry, you must be more like a man”. It meant I was trying to be something I’m not, and that didn’t feel right. I reflected on what she’d said and decided to do the opposite, be more authentic – and that’s when I found what works best for me and my career started to take off. I often get asked, how do I get heard at a table full of loud men, and I tell them, ?don’t speak louder, speak softer, you will find this calms the room and makes people listen. Don’t be something you’re not, use your strengths to your advantage. It’s advice I think applies equally to everyone, women and men.
7. Reflecting on your career path, what pivotal moments or experiences have shaped your passion for Digital? As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, so that certainly was a pivot. My mum used to work three jobs to put food on the table when I was very young. We rarely saw her as a result, and I wanted to be able to take care of her as well as my sister and myself. I never knew what that would mean, but I knew I would have to be creative and adapt to find something that would enable me to do that and not to have to rely on someone else. I had to learn how the world works quickly, and that’s the most important thing to do in any? company – understand the strategy, the values, what the business needs to do and then how you can help enable that. I’m not a technical expert and yet I am a Digital leader. ?I see my role as a leader to focus on how I can help the people who are experts have the space to succeed and do their best work, to bring people the best people together to achieve that, and sometimes to help them understand each other.
8. What skills do you think will be essential for the next generation of women leaders? Two key things – you have to be authentically yourself. And this is a tough one to take, we have to all realise that we are still in a disruption phase. To succeed and change the world, you have to be strong enough to take the knocks, brave enough to call them out when it is warranted and kind enough to forgive those knocking you so they can learn. Only then you can help shift the pendulum to an equilibrium. ?
9. Who is your role model and why? I don’t have one role model. To me, modelling yourself on a single person is another example of not being authentic. But when I look back at my life there are many people I have learnt from – including people who have taught me what not to do. You need to take lessons about what is right from everyone you meet. Always keep learning about yourself as the only constant is: everything changes, including you, so what works for you today may prove to be a vulnerability in the future (see what I did there ??).
10. In what ways have you pushed against stereotypes in your career? When I left to set up my own business in 2017, the handover wasn’t taken seriously. I was seen as a young woman with no ‘real technical skills’ so obviously didn’t know what I was talking about. It meant the company rapidly found itself struggling as they did not follow the advice I left them. They ended up calling me and hired my new business to recover the situation. Being able to change their perception and the stereotype of a woman in this industry to show what I was capable of, left me feeling happy for saving my friends jobs, and vindicated that their perceptions were not my reality - I actually did know what I was talking about.
11. In what ways do you hope to inspire others who are considering or currently pursuing careers in Digital, based on your own experiences and insights gained along your journey?? Success can come for anybody as long as you believe in yourself. It doesn’t matter your background or the perceived inhibitors that others or your upbringing put on you. If you want to take a risk, I urge you to do it,. Think it through, calculate it, and then take it. The only chance you should not take, is never taking a risk. You will learn so much about yourself when you do it and this really helps to build your confidence.