CEO on the spot: 10 questions with Hootsuite’s Irina Novoselsky

I came to the US as a refugee from Ukraine when I was four years old and I witnessed the resilience of my family, as they arrived in a new country with very little and worked their way up.

There are two lotteries in life. One is the geography you’re born into – I didn’t win that one – and the other is the parents you’re born to, which I did win. They took me out of a difficult situation and gave me an appreciation for the importance of hard work. 

People face challenges every day, having the resilience to keep going is what’s most important.

The experience really shaped my mentality. The idea that nothing is impossible is cemented in my brain. Those that work with me know that the concept of ‘no’ doesn’t exist for me. I refuse to be told something can’t be done. I believe that, with the right team, anything can be achieved.

I don’t think anybody’s ever ready for their first CEO role. Being a first-time CEO is really hard. The skills that you need to get to that level in your career aren’t usually the skills that make you good at that next level, so you need to be willing to keep progressing.

The biggest lesson I learnt is how to be your authentic self as a leader. I’ve worked with some really amazing CEOs and I carefully watched how they lead. There was one in particular, who I really looked up to, but I was a 32-year-old millennial woman when I first became CEO – I couldn’t lead in exactly the same way as they did, I had to find a way to lead that was authentic to me.

It took me nine months to find my voice and learn that it’s okay for me to use emojis in emails and to be more vulnerable and a little bit more culturally relevant in my references.

A lot of people filter their behaviour when they first get promoted, but the job gets a lot easier when you’re authentically yourself.

The best leaders are the ones that make their team feel inspired and empowered, while still being held accountable. It has less to do with the individual and more about how they make others feel.

Leaders need to give people direction and an ability to thrive in their role. The three main elements of my job are: set the strategy, pick the right people for the team and then help them to achieve their personal goals and the company goals.

My leadership style is driven by my dedication to finding people who are smart, talented and hungry and then giving them opportunities. 

So much of leadership is the ability to morph and adjust so the person you want to lead feels inspired. 

It’s like the different love languages [which describe the different ways people like to receive and express love in a relationship], you have to find out what communication method works best for each person you lead. That comes with failures and successes. 

A lot of people think someone has to have prior experience to be successful in a new role. But the most successful people I’ve hired have been those I’ve taken a risk on.

I pivoted careers. I left finance and moved into operational roles before I became a CEO. It was a challenging transition but I managed to find leaders that were willing to take a chance on me. I want to be able to keep taking those risks as a leader.

One of the things that motivates me the most is the ability to positively influence people’s careers. I want to help others get to where they want to be.

They need to have a team mentality – that’s really important to me. This means prioritising the business’s goals over their own specific priorities or selfish interests.

We also look to recruit people who are problem-solvers. I love it when people recognise their mistakes and take ownership of them because that means they have confidence in themselves to find a way to solve it.

Being a good human helps a lot too. Life is short and who you work with is really important. At Hootsuite we have a ‘no-asshole’ policy. My advice for other leaders is hire people you want to be at dinner with or share a flight with. The people who I put on my team are the people I want to emulate.

Managing people is really difficult. I make mistakes on a daily basis and a lot of them relate to leadership. But this shouldn’t be seen as a big deal. A mistake is just an experiment that went wrong and if you want to innovate, you have to be willing to experiment.

The mistakes that stick in my brain are generally people-related – did I fail to communicate a problem in an effective way? Was I unable to develop somebody that I really should have? Did I react too quickly to a problem or move too slowly? To be a better leader, I need to constantly push myself to think from other people’s perspectives and bring vulnerability and empathy to the role.

The social media industry is changing massively. There are 5 billion people spending almost three hours a day on social media. What other industry has that many eyeballs on it?

When you think about the last 10 years, organisations have used social media as a signpost, pointing people in their direction. The next 10 years will be drastically different.

In the future, the focus will be on improving social media performance and leveraging its potential. I think it’s really important that we lean into unlocking the value of social and the impact it has for your community, business and organisation.

I love reading books written by sports coaches because there’s a lot of crossover between building a successful sports team and a successful corporate one. One book I’ve read over and over again is The Score Takes Care of Itself, by [former San Francisco 49ers coach] Bill Walsh.

It’s funny because I’m into sports, but I’m not that interested, and people often wonder why I read these very intense sports books. But they really get to the heart of the question of how to build a high-performance team.

Taking time off for vacation and sleep are incredibly important for leaders. Some think it’s a taboo topic but I think chief executives should talk about the benefits of taking time off more – we all need to unplug and recharge.

I’m capable of doing two to three months of intense work and then I need to unplug. That’s what works for me. I also try to maximise my sleep and get eight hours every night.

Each person has to figure out what works for their own mental wellness. My work gives me a lot of energy and passion but I need to recharge so I can bring my best self to work.