WUN4ALL
WUN's mission is to help women to connect with other women, so they can share learnings, build confidence, and develop their own passion for the fast moving utilities space. Through our podcast episodes, we aim to provide our listeners with the skills they need to build long-lasting and fulfilling careers in the sector.
Find us at: thewun.co.uk
WUN4ALL
Ep.70 #WUNCareerStories - Nicole McNab, Southern Water - Rising Star Award Winner at WiU talking with Kerris Mackley, WUN Advocate
WUN Advocate Kerris Mackley chats to Nicole McNab, the 2024 Women in Utilities Rising Start Winner, discussing the importance of owning your own career – stop waiting for other people to do it for you. Also discussed in this episode is the need to be authentic, that it is ok to have ups and downs, and that the key to successful recruiting is finding people that care!
Nicole is Head of Strategic Partnerships at Southern Water. Joining the industry three years ago into the newly formed Clean Rivers and Seas Task Force, a dedicated team delivering innovative solutions to sustainably reduce storm overflows. Nicole has tackled overflow reduction head on, building new partnerships with councils, businesses, schools and campaign groups, while refusing to accept “that is just the way things are done”. Her ability to translate complex topics to the public, while delivering multi-million-pound schemes at pace, earnt her the Rising Star Award 2024 at the Women in Utilities Awards. Her team also won the Partnership/Alliance Project of the Year at the Water Industry Awards, for installing SuDS in almost 100 schools across the south within 18 months.
Find out more about Women in Utilities Awards 2025- including hearing from other past winners, how to book ceremony tickets or sponsorship opportunities.
Nicole is also joining the panel - What Future Leaders Want from Today’s Leaders: Attracting and Retaining Talent, 24 April, 2025, 11AM, BST.
Hear from a panel of future leaders from across the sector as they share their insights on the policies, cultures, and leadership approaches that make an employer truly stand out to the next generation of women in utilities.
Welcome to the Women's Utilities Network One for All podcast. Our corner of the world where we'll be talking all things energy water, sharing personal stories and debating female issues.
Speaker B:Enjoy. Hello, and welcome to the One podcast. Thanks so much for joining again. We love our listeners and we're really excited to be back with Nicole, who I will let introduce herself. Nicole, if you could, I'll hand over to you to do a little introduction and just tell us about yourself and why you're here today.
Speaker A:Yeah, brilliant. Well, thank you so much for inviting me back on. This is my second time on this podcast, so I'm in a very privileged club. So I'm Nicole McNabb, I'm head of Strategic partnerships at Southern Water, and I work in the Clean Ribbon Seas Task Force. So we were a dedicated group established about three years ago to really tackle how we can reduce storm overflows sustainably and ultimately for the long term, which is obviously what we all want. So that's very much my role. And I'm here because I was super lucky and I should probably give myself more credit. Really pleased to win an award last summer. So thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker B:Well, our pleasure to have you on not once, but twice. We're spoiled. And once again, exactly one of our prestigious award winners and absolutely delighted to have you as part of the ONE network and part of the one one Awards winners. So speaking of my first question and our opener is, so obviously you run the, the Rising star Awards at R1 Awards. First of all, just tell me a little bit about that, how the process went for you, how you got involved. And also as well is how it's changed your approach to your career and how transformed since then.
Speaker A:Well, it's been brilliant. I highly recommend people enter the awards. I mean, the whole. The whole ceremony was fantastic and it was full of most incredible women and allies right across the industry. So where it came from for me is I don't know how I found it. To be fair. I stumbled upon it that the awards were coming up and it was one of those natural ones where you see these awards and then you sometimes sit back and think, right, is anyone going to nominate anyone we know or. Because then I'm going to put me forward for it. And then I realized that I could speak to my manager about this. You know, I can manage my own destiny to a degree. So I contacted my manager and said, there's this award. It was the Rising Star Award, and it's for someone who's been in the industry for fewer than five years and made a significant impact. So once I got over my initial imposter syndrome, then I got over the fact of all maybe this is going to make me seem really ego driven or people are going to judge me, et cetera, et cetera. I thought, no, I can talk to my manager and he can politely decline if there's a problem. So. But he didn't, you know, he's, he's super supportive. He's always been very supportive. So we, we basically wrote the application and submitted it and it was a little bit hush hush like I told a couple of people, but I didn't tell too many people again, I think it was worry of being rejected but you know, you're going against so many fantastic people so you've just, sometimes you've just got to pitch for it. So yeah, so it went in and then I got shortlisted and it was. I can't even tell you what work call I was on at the time when I got that email through, but I can tell you I absolutely did not listen for the remainder of that call. I was ecstatic. It was like the highlight of my life that I'd been shortlisted because it was a real moment in my career where I said, actually I'm going to put myself out there and I'm going to take that uncomfortable feeling of having to have this conversation and then writing about myself as, you know, in such a positive way and to get shortlisted. I was genuinely, I was absolutely over the moon. And then on the day of the ceremony, I took a colleague with mine who's absolutely brilliant and she's both a calming influence and also always super supportive. So we sat there and she was enjoying the dinner and having the time of her life and I was there incredibly nervous and other awards got announced. The people on stage, part of me wanted to win at that point because I really wanted to meet the people on stage.
Speaker B:We had a great team up there for sure.
Speaker A:Yeah, great team. So I thought, you know, just, just even that opportunity and then when my name got read out, it was. All the nerves went, I think I half sprinted to the stage and, you know, gave, gave people a hug on the stage and I just was beaming, absolutely beaming. So yeah. Has it changed my career? It has to a degree. It certainly allowed me to network with people a little bit better and you know, been able to be lucky enough to have that. Kudos. You do have people kind of contact you and that, that's really lovely to that that happens. But it really just, every time that I've backed myself in my career, which is probably not as often as the impression I give to my colleagues. You know, like every, like everyone, you know, we always have self doubt but I really backed myself for this and it was successful and it just gave me that push of why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you just put your name in the hat and you know, I can write the most amazing application in the world, but I'm not on the judging panel. I don't decide if I'm shortlisted and I don't decide if I won. So the fact that I was even shortlisted was almost that kind of vindication that, that it was okay that I was at that level in my career. So yeah, I love the whole process, start to finish and I think the awards are fantastic. So yeah, if you haven't applied already, get, get yourself in.
Speaker B:Absolutely. A shout out for please apply. Join all that stuff for our one awards this year coming up. But also I have to. Why wouldn't you is I think the quote to take away from that. And I think it's so interesting and so fantastic to hear one that the fantastic work that you've done is recognized. And as you said from application all the way through, I'm also intrigued by some of the things you said about kind of not mentioning it to people and then, you know, taking a friend and all of those different things. And I think as a lot of people find with their careers, these things can be quite challenging and not necessarily linear. And there are even in the best of times, you know, winning the Rising Star Award at the ONE Awards, there's still challenges that you face. And that kind of leads me on a little bit to my next question, which, you know, sometimes things aren't all sunshine and roses, but what are your advice for dealing with those kind of tougher times or, you know, when you face adversity, how do you get over those challenges? You know, we've talked about imposter syndrome and all of these things. What's your approach approach and what's your advice to overcoming those things and moving forward?
Speaker A:I think the best thing you can do is try to have some perspective. Why are people maybe not responding to you as well as you would like to? Why are things harder than they should? And there could be a number of reasons for that. It can be that actually you personally approached it wrong and the way that you communicated it wasn't as good as it could be. It might be that other people have different agendas or they've got other things going on in their lives. That you don't have always full visibility of. So some first there's perspective of the kind of the human interaction if they're difficult for that reason. Also, I had some brilliant advice recently where someone said to me, difficult parts of the job are actually the job. You know, if it was all easy, you wouldn't need these roles. You wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't need these different individuals to come in and try and make a success of them. So I think it's perspective. I think the biggest lesson I've learned, and I'm not always great at it, I've got to say, but the biggest lesson I've learned is not allowing difficult situations to live rent free in your mind. Again, it's really interesting the impression you give people, the impression you give the people you manage, the people that you work with both internally and externally isn't always the true reflection of how people feel. So I can have a call and it can go badly and it's badly because maybe I didn't handle it very well or I, you know, I could have done it in a different way. And that can play over in my mind all evening, it can play in my mind all weekend or if I fall out with someone, it can play on my mind for longer. And it's just that, as I said, don't let that live rent through in your mind so that it's just on you. Because the reality is that people will have difficult interactions and they'll let it go. So perspective, letting it go and being kind to yourself. No one is perfect. You're going to get things wrong. But the difficulty is sometimes why you're doing the role, because you've got to go through those difficult patches 100%.
Speaker B:And I think I was struck by your story as well, is in the face of things going on, you know, this noise, and you still went and applied for the award. It's kind of Joe Butlin, who are one of our founders, has this thing of saying, be brave. So you feel this and you feel those things and you do it anyway. I think that's like a. You're a. Well, a shining example of that. An award winner and running later. And don't let people live rent free. Once again, we're getting some really, some really good quotes here.
Speaker A:I think not everyone is supportive. I would say the vast majority of people are very supportive of other people's highs in their careers and when they do well. But some people aren't. And it's not, again, because they're not nice people. It's sometimes it's a bit of jealousy, sometimes it just. It's not their time and they've worked really hard. They also deserve recognition. So it's just being patient that it's. You can't expect everyone to be happy in that moment for you, but you've got to then make sure that you're championing other people when they're getting the limelight, so that, you know, you're kind of creating that more that inclusive culture rather than that competitive culture.
Speaker B:Oh, lovely. We can all win. That is the way we move forward. Everyone has those moments, which is lovely to support them through. So when we had our initial chat for this conversation as well, we listened to the podcast, we do an initial chat and then we move and we had a fantastic conversation. And I wanted to ask you today again, the podcast about you had some really interesting takes on recruiting, recruitment specifically and recruitment kind of in, you know, looking at a more inclusive space as well. And I wanted to just talk about it a little bit. So in terms of recruitment, my question is to you is what do you think will make a difference to companies at the front end? So to the sector and to the business and to the people. I think this all said, it may seem slightly left to feel, but actually it all links together of how we start to form teams and how we start to create this fantastic environment that allows everyone to thrive and allows everyone to deliver their best. So wanted to turn to that because you had some really interesting insights about how you, what your take on, what your approach is for it.
Speaker A:I'm super biased, but I think the utilities industry is the best industry in the ever, you know, compared to anything else.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So we have to, we have to appeal to people, we have to recruit new talent, diversity of thought people into industry that we haven't previously. And you can't do that if you continue to always follow the same model. So what I really learned a few years ago was not to recruit the mini versions of myself or the kind of succession plan, but actually recruit in the gaps in the team. So I've managed to recruit in amazing people. This actually is where I'm most smug. You know, the people, people I've brought into the team have been absolutely phenomenal. And the thing that they have in, they have two things in common. One is that they can do parts of the role way better than I ever could. So I'm able to bring people in who really excel in what they're brilliant at. And I just champion that and make sure that they have the support and overall it makes us a better team. And the second thing is ultimately they really care. They have to care about the environment and customers and I think they're the two drivers is you get people in to fill the gaps and not just kind of a repeat of what you've always done. And you want to have kind of the future in mind, but you also bring in people that day to day want to get up and make a difference and then you've got the best of both worlds. You've got really good, really kind people who are going to do their absolute best to do everything they can for the environment, for instance. And you've got people who are going to add something and add value into the team. So I think recruitment across the whole sector needs to find the passionate people and bring them in and be open minded because you can learn skills and you can learn knowledge, but you, you can't learn to care. So for me that fundamentally is the main thing. If they care enough, I will work with them on anything they want to and they can outshine me any day, actually. I love when they do that. They love when they challenge me. But if they don't, then you're into hiding to nowhere. I think.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that give and take as well as a really valuable message is, you know, we are fundamentally individuals with our individual skills. And that's partly it's putting together that team. Well, one, it's why you've won a Rising Star, putting together that team and having that approach to really make it sing. You know, kind of that clock analogy where you've got little cogs doing all different things and different jobs to make everything work together and sing together. So on that note as well, being the Rising Star and moving towards obviously increasing that kind of senior level, I think what my next question is, how are you going where you are and how do you choose to operate as a senior level to kind of continue to your career? What's your approach to that seniority and how are you going to. Probably culturally, from business sense, all of those different facets, how are you going to choose to operate in your career going forward at that senior level?
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a really good question. I should also start by saying I had the year of my career last year. Between going through and getting shortlisted for the Rising Star Award, I also got promoted to head of function. I'd been on this podcast, there was almost nothing left else to achieve in my career. So, you know, I've always been quite concerned this year won't be as good, but I'll make sure I have to make it even better. But I found that the more I've gone up in my career, the more I've actually been more my authentic self. And quite unapologetically, you know, I said earlier, I don't always get everything right. I'm actually far from it. But I really do care, and I care about people, and I try to show the human part of myself and encourage the human part of other people as well. So I've got a colleague who I'll call up every now and then and I'll start the conversation with. I'm actually not calling about work. I just. I just want to chat. Just, you know, I just. Just had a bad day. You know, seniority for that doesn't always matter now. There are certain things you have to try and get in place and certain structures, and that's different. And you can't be everyone's best friend, which I find, you know, really difficult. On a kind of just personal level, I'd like to get on with everyone, but I think you've just got to be who you are. And anytime I've had a difficult moment in kind of my care, I've kind of seeked out people for advice, either through formal or informal mentoring. And the biggest lesson I've learned, I always hold on to is every person I talk to, when you really get down to that one, on one level is actually that they have tough days, they struggle sometimes, they don't always get things right. They're imperfect, but they're also kind. And that's one of the things that the more senior I get, the more that I'm. I'm happy that people might see, you know, I've got high expectations and I want us to succeed in everything that we do. But fundamentally, I'd like my, my legacy to more. She was kind and she made time for us. And I think that's. That's ultimately what I think my kind of career will. Will keep going with. And what's really reassuring is the more senior people I talk to, the more that is a really fundamental part. So rather than having to kind of the stereotypical, you have to just bulldoze through decisions and people, and you have to be super selfish. No, you don't. I think actually championing other people and being yourself and showing vulnerability at times actually allows you to go more senior. And it allows you to do that in a real way rather than trying to spend all day at work masking who you really are. That, that, that for Me would be the, the worst. I mean, that'd be more stress on top of already a lot to do. So, yeah, that's, that's my plan. I'll, you know, I don't think I'll ever give that up. I think that's, that's the thing that I always hold on to is be yourself.
Speaker B:Authenticity, which is fab to hear and yeah, always, always super, super welcome. So, well, exciting things and lots of exciting things to come. I said, we know you've had an absolutely unbelievable year and that's, that's just the start. There's more, definitely more to come, and each year we're getting better and better. So I suppose kind of coming on to my final question and you've given us a real insight into especially having a physical award to say rising star, here we are, and how your career might progress and what your approach is to kind of these key facets of career development, industry, etc. So to take it away and to kind of finalize as well is what is your approach and your key advice to people in terms of taking hold of your career and actually, you know, really galvanizing and moving forward. What's your one piece of advice as an award winner ahead of function? As you said, all these fantastic things with, you know, a fantastic year that you've had and will continue to have, what's your one piece of enduring advice and things that you would really encourage people to do?
Speaker A:You've got to own your own career. I think it's too easy to rely on managers in particular to solve your career, to put learning opportunities in front of you, to put applications for awards that maybe should go forward in front of you. And there's no need to do that. You have full autonomy over your own career and your choices and you should highlight yourself when you do really well. You should probably stop focusing too much on the things you haven't done well because they're the things that people think a lot through themselves, but most people don't notice them. So I often will see people say particularly kind of things at end of year reviews. They'll say things such as, I got this score and my manager agreed with it, but it actually got knocked down when they kind of review them all the scores maybe across the business. And I understand the frustration that. And I've been in that situation before where I think what you know, but my manager knows who I am and I think what that retells us is it's not good enough to just have that one on one relationship. With your manager, you, if you're doing well, make sure that you know, your manager's manager is aware of what you're doing, that you're putting yourself, making yourself visible, you know, when it's suitable. You know, I wouldn't necessarily, you know, fly the flag if you've missed a deadline or something, but it's absolutely okay to say I was really proud of this piece of work and I'd really like you to know about it and that's totally fine. So I think not just waiting for other people to make it. And as you said earlier, I think the motto of be brave is all, all within that if you go for something and it doesn't work, that's okay, it's okay. But if you don't go for something and you don't ever put yourself forward or you don't suggest some training you want to do or a promotion that you might want, then you might never get it. I'm doing a lots of recruitment at the moment for roles and I've always been very impressed when people put themselves forward for roles, even if they're maybe not quite there yet. The fact that they've done that shows that their intention and it's then put them on the map that more for me to go, oh, I can help them, so do it, give it a go. If for whatever reason you don't feel that you're getting the support in an area that you're in, you also have full autonomy to leave a company. You don't, you don't have to stay there. So back yourself, go for it, lead it your own way and you'll be, you know, mega successful, I have no doubt. Oh, fab.
Speaker B:What a, what a fantastic note to end on and thanks. Well, own your own career is definitely the quote. So well, Nicole, thank you so much. As said, our absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. Quick shout out as well to the One Awards. If you haven't applied, please apply and also as well look at getting your tickets. It was a fantastic event last year as Nicole, I will echo the sentiment from Nicole. The room was absolutely incredible, full of unbelievable talent from nominees to winners to just an absolutely fantastic network. It was a really positive day and highly recommend you apply and come own your own career and move forward. So Nicole, thank you so much for having the time for us and to see everything that's going on with one and what we've got coming up. Please go to our website, please follow us on LinkedIn and make sure that you are I said signed up to be part of our network. Thank you so much and thank you for joining us for the One podcast.
Speaker A:Sam.