Hawa: Female managers in tech need coaching to thrive

Being able to achieve the best result requires dedication and commitment.

It is these aptitudes that have enabled Hawa Mwakatundu to withstand challenges in the long run and reach her goals.

Hawa is now a senior executive with over 11 years of experience in acquisition and retention as well as digital marketing and team performance management and enhancement in various sectors such as telecoms, ICTs, fintech, oil and gas marketing, and human resources.

She is currently working at Smart Africa Group as the business director for Smartnology, which is a subsidiary company that deals with the development and maintenance of tech solutions.

Prior to Smartnology, she was the business manager at FastHub Solutions, where she was the tiebreaker for the departments.

In that role, she oversaw the business plan execution on a day-to-day basis while ensuring a high level of accountability to guarantee successful implementation of the company’s vision in alignment with the core values.

Hawa is an alumni of Tumaini University College, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration. In 2019, she was awarded the employee of the year award by Zoom Tanzania. This came after she received the Vodacom Customer Experience Star in 2018.

According to Hawa, her passion is ignited by the need to understand customer behavior.

“What people don’t know about Hawa is that I enjoy working with different teams, departments, and subsidiaries in order to enhance personnel capabilities in growing brands and also simplify the service delivery process,” she says.

She further said that she strongly believes in the power of seamless communication and that she is always driven by the curiosity of understanding why things happen the way they do.

“So that has driven me to where I’m at now, and the beauty is we always keep evolving, technology-wise, business-wise, and learning wise. I find myself always curious about it,” says Hawa.

Diversity is key

On what has shaped her managerial skills, Hawa attributes diversity at the workplace.

She says working with different people who have different personalities has helped her learn the necessary skills that are required to climb the corporate ladder.

“It has created some sort of flexibility in me, allowing me to adapt and improve based on the types of people I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis,” she details.

According to Hawa, she sort of knew where she wanted to be from the very beginning because of her passion to help people get services in the simplest way possible.

She spends hours with her team creating new solutions every day that are making an impact in their business.

“So I am the person who is driven by the desire to ensure that everything is as simple as possible,” she explains.

Before becoming the person she is today, Hawa admits that she struggled with “the corporate perception of the job,” especially when she was at Zoom Tanzania. According to her, the mentoring she received made her into the better, more dependable manager she is today.

“My mentor discovered that I was very good with people,” she says. “I am such that even if you give me a bunch of personalities to deal with, I will effectively deal with them to achieve the best performance for the company,” adds Hawa.

Hawa believes that confidence is what makes any woman a better leader in the corporate world.

Why self-confidence matters

There are a lot of women out there who have huge leadership potential and are capable of doing big things, but they lack the self-confidence that is very important in leadership and managerial positions.

“I was fortunate enough to have good mentors who literally pushed me and told me that I could do better,” she reveals.

She notes that another attribute that women are supposed to have is being daring enough to try anything.

“We have to take a leap of faith in everything we do,” says Hawa.

She explains that women are supposed to be curious when challenges come their way. When she was given a business manager position, she used to doubt herself.

There were times she really thought she wouldn’t be able to deliver, but she eventually improved, thanks to the mentoring she received from her superiors. She also did a lot of self-improvement through learning from the lives of successful women.

“I started to recall previous bosses and leaders who were women and how they did it and why I couldn’t do the same. This helped make everything look so easy. I’m the person who loves learning new things,” she notes.

According to Hawa, one thing she can’t compromise on is the quality of service she gives her customers.

“Quality and a high level of communication are the things that I can’t compromise. It doesn’t matter if it takes ages to perfect it; I will perfect it for my customers,” she clarifies.

The reason why there are fewer women in the field of technology in Tanzania is because of the stereotype, which dictates that certain things can be done only by men and not women, Hawa argues.

She says some women easily lose hope when some things do not go as planned, and this leads to many losing interest in becoming leaders or shunning the field of technology altogether.

“Women in tech are supposed to inspire other women. One of the reasons why there are few women is because there are no case studies from which women in tech can learn from. And in positions, don’t give a helping hand to other women below them,” says Hawa.

In her opinion, there is still room for women to become leaders in any organization if they’re motivated enough to learn from what others have done in the tech industry.

“It’s time now for women to be open to coaching and mentoring. We need programmes for both women who love tech and those who are from universities,” Hawa narrates. Within the Smart Africa Group, through its Smartlab subsidiary, the company provides coaching and mentorship to start-ups and universities.

“Now we have a Smartlab accelerator programme. What happens is that we connect start-ups with experts in the field of technology,” she says.