Blurb:

Suzanne Daniels, senior manager in the office of the group executive, technology and commercial at Eskom, talks to Tracy Hancock of Engineering News about her attachment to her secretary and why it is okay to question the boss.

As the right-hand woman of Eskom’s top executives, the State-owned power utility’s senior manager in the office of the group executive, Suzanne Daniels, reveals that “big personalities” are “actually human”, get moody and, at times, forget things too.

Dealing with the likes of former President Thabo Mbeki and his economic adviser Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, and Eskom executives such as Dan Marokane and Matshela Koko, Daniels has learnt that – seemingly counterintuitively – questioning the boss is not necessarily taboo.

Working with big personalities or at executive level is tough, though, she says. “You do need to get to know your boss. You don’t have to be friends, but you need to know their pressure points and what drives them,” stresses Daniels, a girl raised by her grandparents in a suburb called Wetton, in Cape Town, who adds that it is important to understand where that person is coming from and realise that they might see the world through different eyes.

As the CEO of the Thabo Mbeki Development Trust for Disabled People from January 2001 to July 2002, Daniels realised that her “little world” was “my home, my family and Pretoria”, while for Thabo Mbeki, who was at time State president and head of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, the world included South Africa, Africa and the other continents.

To understand such people’s perspective, questions are required and fortunately in asking these questions, “I was never made to feel like ‘a silly girl’,” she comments.

Because her bosses were so busy, Daniels says, they did not volunteer information and not because they did not want to. “They did not realise that you might not know”, she explains, revealing that she now has the same problem – assuming people know what she is thinking.

“[However], you also need to relax and realise that you have been hired because you have certain skills and, although you might not know everything, you do know some things.

“[Further] I learnt a lot more through my mistakes, or what I perceived to be mistakes, [than from my successes],” states the University of Cape Town law graduate, who specialised in contract law.

The 45-year-old was taught to think critically and not take things at face value while attending Livingstone High School, in Claremont, one of the southern suburbs of Cape Town.

“I grew up in pre-94 South Africa. My childhood was strict, I think, but I also had freedom as I was the only child in the house.”

She says her first introduction to apartheid was during the 1976 riots, noting that during high school, in the 80s, “we [the generation of school children] became politically active and held student protests. I missed a year of school because of the 1985 boycotts, which made me realise that we were all not being treated as equal.”

Daniels wanted to be a lawyer since she was four years old, partly because of a television series she watched – Beste Professor – and partly because it allowed her to think critically.

However, she started her journey to understanding the needs of executive-level management when she left the field of law to work at Global Access Telecommunications Services, from November 1, 1998 to March 31, 2000, as the company’s Western Cape manager.

That was when she realised that “there is life outside law”, but that legal training was useful, especially as “I did a commercial bend to my law degree”, notes Daniels, highlighting, however, that “as a young person, I was quite intimidated”.

Global Access, she says, was a great experience where she was exposed to creative people who produced business-to-business communications, such as videos, which was outside her structured legal background but improved her people management skills.

“I also worked with an older, predominantly male team. Having to navigate that at such a young age was also challenging, but I had the support of the MD and executives so, tough as it was, it was a good transition.”

After leaving the telecommunications sector to work for the Thabo Mbeki Development Trust for Disabled People, Daniels consulted on various government projects. These, she points out, were formative years that sculpted her work methodology.

In 2006, Daniels joined Eskom as its chief legal adviser.

This position included assisting the utility’s coal supply managers in the implementation of operational plans, which involved Daniels being on the negotiation team for the coal supply agreements related to the Medupi coal-fired power station, in Limpopo.

From there, in April 2008, Daniels was appointed contracts senior manager for coal, water and gas in Eskom’s primary energy division – a “stressful time”, owing to the 2008 blackouts. She then progressed to become the division’s strategic projects specialist in January 2010 where she supported the MD in carrying out his governance and regulatory compliance responsibilities.

Today, Daniels is responsible for working with Eskom’s senior management team, verifying whether strategies and tactical plans are appropriately implemented. Her job is to guide, provide counsel, strategise with the executive and personally manage critical areas for the executives that she works with, “to see to it that the job gets done”.

“At the moment I am busy with a nuclear project, which has given me a totally different perspective with regard to how power is produced. That’s the exciting part of the job," she quips. "The other part is dealing with the board, and understanding how strategies and policies are shaped.”

“Executives are kind of like babies, they need to be coddled [by their executive assistants],” Daniels laughs, noting that when she and her secretary Zandi Mbilase are apart, it is like separation anxiety.

Daniels has been with her personal assistant for about three-and-a-half years, “so it is seamless now”, but this was not initially the case.

“My secretary was very blunt with me one day. She was bold enough to sit me down and say: ‘You need to trust me. This is my job; you need to concentrate on yours. But, in order for me to do what I need to do, you need to trust me.’ It was the biggest learning curve for me as an executive and, at this point, I can safely work at home while she manages the office.”

Daniels will be a speaker at The Woodstock Company’s Secretaries Day Conference, titled Career Effective Solutions, on September 3, at Johannesburg Summer Place. She will be joined by the late President Nelson Mandela’s personal assistant Zelda La Grange and executive coach Jonti Mayer.