Susan Peters, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, GE

Kellee Khalil • Notre Dame, IN, United States • $200k - $250k / year • 1m ago

This Rad V.P. at GE Has Helped Women Advance for 37+ Years

Susan Peters knows a thing or two about how women can build their careers in the workplace.For the past 37 years, she's spent her days helping countless numbers of them advance at GE in every industry and role. Today she serves as GE's Senior Vice President, Human Resources.

She has insight on every step of your career, along with advice on how to attain a work-life balance (there actually isn't one), how to balance motherhood and work (do the best you can), and navigating a male-dominated workforce (being the odd one out can work to your advantage when you're the unique voice in the room).

Hers is a career built on a solid foundation. And it's a career built at a company that values and supports long-term employees and evolves its business models with new technology and social trends.

It's precisely this background that supported Susan's own impressive professional growth, and it's what makes her uniquely qualified to advise us all on how to manage successful, fulfilling careers. Read on for some advice gold, including our personal favorite: how to get a promotion at work. Counterintuitively, it involves bragging.

Her Starting Point

You got your undergraduate degree in English Literature from St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame. What drew you to that major? How do you think your undergraduate experiences and education contributed to where you are today professionally?

I majored in English because my father was an English major. I liked reading and developing the ability to discern what the author was trying to say, and I liked the challenge of expressing myself in writing. I have used that skill as I have grown in my career. Despite the use of technology and social media tools, today, writing is a huge part of how we communicate, and being able to write well has contributed to my career development progression and current position.

My advice to young people interested in a business career is to be as well-rounded as possible and have a broad foundation. I would recommend that if you are a liberal arts major, you add in a heavy dose of finance courses.

Did you always know you wanted to work in human resources? How did you get your first job at GE?

Even though I have been at GE for 37 years, I didn’t start my career here. I had gotten my master’s degree in education at the University of Virginia, and I got my first job at the admissions office of Georgetown University. What I really wanted to do at that stage of my life was to be dean of students. I soon realized I wanted to work on a wider range of issues than the academic environment presented.

I knew I was drawn to helping individuals and organizations resolve their issues and do better. But I didn’t have a name for it. So I talked to the career director at UVA’s business school and he said, “What about human resources?” So I wrote lots of letters—one went to GE—and I started in the leadership training program in Louisville, KY in 1979. And the rest is history. Little did I know that in many ways, I am dean of students at GE!

You have worked all the way up to SVP of Human Resources. Tell us about your earliest roles at the company. Did you ever face challenges as a woman on the job, and if so, how did you deal with them?

I had many formative roles early in my career, which is the hallmark of GE. Our early career development programs rotate you through various jobs and experiences. Coming out of the HR leadership program, I chose to become labor relations manager at a plant. It was a rough and tumble labor environment with a tough labor leader. This was 1981. There were very few women doing labor relations then.

Many were surprised that I was taking on a non-traditionally female job, so that’s a level of sexism in and of itself. It was the school of hard knocks. What I found was that I was resilient, that I could handle the pushback. I also found there were two sides to the coin. Sometimes I was the only woman in the room. I was sometimes talked over. But, because I was the only woman in the room, when I spoke I had a different perspective and a different voice and, more often than not, people listened. This labor guy I worked with, his M.O. was tough, bravado, swearing. With me, he was more balanced and genteel, and we were able to move decisions together in a more collaborative way.

You’ve climbed the corporate ladder to the very top, and you recently contemporized GE’s leadership values to better equip your team to “meet tomorrow’s challenges.” What was it like moving into a leadership role the first time? How did your own experiences contribute to your work with GE’s leadership values? What do you think is the key to being a good manager? What about a great one?

The secret sauce to all of these questions is to listen and to learn. Every step of the way, I have tried to do both. When you listen, you show respect for others and you gain insights and context. When you learn, through whatever vehicle, you broaden your horizons.

Tell us about your day-to-day role as SVP at GE. We know no day’s typical, but what are some of the usual tasks you tackle? When do you get to the office? When do you leave?

I think of my role in three spheres. 1. The individual contributor—…the work that only I can do. This would include interface with the Board of Directors, public speaking, etc. 2. The work I do as an HR person is still part of the role—those things that move the team forward for better outcomes. And 3. the work of leading the HR function so that there is a multiplier effect on our agenda.

I get into the office by 7:30 am and usually leave by 6:30 pm.

What’s your favorite part about your job? What about your least?

I love connecting the dots and helping others do the same. Having the context helps people “see around corners.” I don’t like doing the budget, but I make it work.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about GE? What one thing would you want them to know?

I think there are some big misconceptions about GE because it is a 125-year-old company and it is large—and that is two strikes against you today: old and big. Everybody wants small and new, a startup, etc. But today, we are a digital-first company that does awesomely cool things. Every two seconds, an airplane takes off with a GE engine in it. Most people have friends and family who have had CT or MRI scans on our GE imaging equipment. GE powers a third of the world’s electricity. We do renewable energy. It’s important, unbelievable, mission-based work. And you can have a lifetime of careers in one company.

You recently wrote an article about being a working mother in which you mention GE’s Working Mother program. Why is this issue so important in your eyes? What do you think the greatest challenge is for working women and working mothers today, and how has that changed since you were working and raising your child?

I think it’s still a huge challenge today, though perhaps for different reasons. Let’s roll the tape back to my early career. There was no technology, no cell phone, no laptop, no tablet—no way to connect. The way you got your work done was to physically go to the office, and you usually didn’t bring your child with you. So there was a “face time” challenge that is less overt today because you can do things from different venues, whether it’s your home or a soccer field. I hope and think this newer generation is taking advantage of that. But the flip side and the challenge facing today’s moms is that there is no separating the two. There’s no work-life balance… it’s just life.

It’s really hard to talk about mistakes, but at CC, we believe that women should share their mistakes with other women because it helps us all get a real picture of what it takes. That being said, what’s one big mistake you’ve made in your career, and what did you learn from it? What's your best advice for women handling mistakes of their own?

The biggest mistake I made—and this was 20 years ago—related to being too focused on “the task” and not stepping back enough to look at the big picture. I focused on the task at hand instead of looking at where we were as a team and where we were trying to go. I have observed that women have a tendency—and I realize I’m generalizing—to be doers and list-makers. They think they will be rewarded for getting things done. I learned from that experience, and I have gotten better, although I find I still lean in that direction. I still get a lot of things done. But we all need to stop, step back, spend time on the strategic, see around corners, and focus on the work of the future, not just today.

Her Perspective

Given that you’ve been promoted at GE so many times, what’s your best advice for a woman who wants a raise or promotion at her own company?

First, do the work. Execute. Be the person who is capable in that context and delivers outcomes. But don’t forget about marketing. Marketing is being willing to tell the story of what the team has accomplished. I often find people who say, “Well, that’s not me. I’m not political. I don’t want to brag.” I’m not asking people to brag. I’m suggesting that they tell the story of the work the team does and the outcomes they achieve, and do that in an effective way. People will begin to notice it.

I also believe you have to have a good “hallway reputation.” What do people say about you when you walk past them in the hall? Do they say, “Oh gosh, I love working with her. She is so good, smart, responsive. I’ve learned from her.” Or do they say, “Geez, I wish she had gotten back to me on that project. I wish that work was a little more thorough.” Don’t kid yourself, people talk about you. Know your hallway reputation, and change it if you need to. Or leverage it, if you want to use it to get a promotion.

What’s one thing most people don’t know about the human resources field that they should?

It’s the one function in which you can play in every function. I’ve supported engineering, manufacturing, sales and marketing—you name it. We get to see the big picture and help individuals and organizations achieve their goals. How cool is that?

How important is company culture in deciding whether to take a job?

Now you have me on my passion. Culture is that set of “unwritten rules” that people abide by in any family, organization, or in a company like GE. I am a very strong believer that culture is important and you have to be extremely intentional about it. We at GE believe leaders create the culture and the culture creates the leaders. You have to focus on both leadership development and culture development.

You want to be in a place that is constantly reflective of, and moving toward, the culture you desire. At our leadership institute in Crotonville, NY, we did some redesign several years ago, and among the things we did was cut into the walls of buildings so we would have windows in rooms that had no windows before. It sounds silly, but it was about being open and transparent.

You were a working mother and now you’re a working grandmother—how do you strike a balance between the job and time off with your family? And, with all those professional and personal obligations, how do you make time just for yourself/self-care?

My advice would be, and one thing I did reasonably well, but frankly, perhaps not well enough, is schedule time, so that if I had to be some place for my daughter, I had it on my work calendar. A great piece of advice: It’s like your CEO calling. You have to understand your priorities that day. If it’s one of those big days for your kids—an event or something special—then they are your CEO that day and they get the priority. (That was, frankly, a little easier to do before the CEO could call you on your cell phone anytime.) On other days, business is going to win.

Also, create traditions and memories and commit to them. Kids love tradition. I took my daughter to Disney World every year until she was 15 and didn’t want to go anymore. But now, she’s 30, with a three-month-old daughter, and she remembers those trips and wants to create a tradition like that with her daughter. And while you are carving out time for your kids, you’d better do it for your spouse too. What they say about making a date night—that’s real.

Being a grandmother is such a fun thing. And there’s something extremely special about your daughter having a daughter. It took away a lot of my guilt. Guilt is a human thing, but, perhaps, a more female thing. I’m now at a place where I’ve moved past it, all that guilt that came along the way.

And finally, what do you wake up looking forward to? What's next for you and your career?

No matter what I do in my “career,” I will continue my efforts to give more support, insights and context to girls and women.

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