Episode 233: Secret to Lasting Leadership with NoorJehan Tourte
After unexpectedly making it to the semifinals of the 2022 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Search competition, NoorJehan Tourte made it her mission to get women excited about the prospects of falling on their faces over and over.
If it means that they're working to make this one life on Earth count, she believed that becoming a Sports Illustrated model would represent the culmination of a lifetime spent searching for her true identity. But the experience helped her realize that her childhood dream was not only to be a cover model, but also a role model, one who empowers women to show the world in every way, from every angle, who they really are, unapologetically.
Leadership and empowering women
NoorJehan says leadership and empowering other women has made her more productive in all of her own passions. She says it reminds her there was a time in her life where she was feeling insecure or threatened by other women, and that held her back in many ways.
“All that was doing was robbing me of time to do what I wanted to do and to put myself out there,” says NoorJehan.
Striving to be the best mom, best business owner, best wife all comes from a place of needing validation. And that might come from feeling left out, feeling wronged or rejected at some point. It’s a cycle we have to break to steer away from the women-on-women dynamics of competitiveness and insecurity.
Leading equals doing
NoorJehan was just named co-lead of the brand strategy department at AREA 23, a healthcare advertising agency. She says the one thing she has to remind herself is that leading equals doing.
She’s been told to delegate and be a role model and has seen that some folks interpret role modeling as having direct reports look up to them and strive to become.
NoorJehan says her interpretation of role modeling is her direct reports to see her if you look to the left and right instead of up. She wants her reports to think, “I'm just so happy that she's here and she's doing this with me. I'm going to get it done, and it's going to be done well, because NoorJehan is here supporting me through it.”
She says for her, leading is knowing when you need to get in the trenches because it's for the greater good of someone's well-being or someone's mental health. She says when you build that kind of trust and you show them your credibility, the hope is to have earned their goodwill if you need to call upon them in the future.
Open your own doors
Oftentimes as women we might look at other people's lives and think, “they're so lucky that things just work out for them, or fate is just on their side,” says NoorJehan.
Then, you start to count all the reasons and all the times things didn't work out for you. NoorJehan says she did that as a young girl, but she was able to shift her perspective because her parents would remind her of her resilience.
Whether personal or professional setbacks, NoorJehan says she embraced that time is so precious, so she will open her own doors.
“If you really peel back your life, you will see that you are getting rejected more than you were ever getting accepted. And that's okay. That's life. But my mind immediately pivots to okay, how do I open my own next door?” says NoorJehan.
You don’t need to follow trends
As a brand professional, NoorJehan says she wishes people understood that they don’t have to follow trends, the trends come last. She says you need to focus on the audience and identify the problem they are having.
If you feel confident about the fact that you have a unique solution to this problem, then you go out with your personal brand. That's when you might start seeing traction. She says people should think about the problem that their brand could potentially solve first, rather than looking at the trending influencers.
It’s a philosophy she followed when she and her fiancé started developing a plant-based protein bar.
“Those days where I'm really busy that eating healthy and not worrying about the ingredients and not worrying that this is good for me and good for the environment, it keeps me focused,” she says.
NoorJehan says if there's not a next, then she’s doing something wrong. She says oftentimes when we talk about people that are always looking for the next best thing, it's someone who's scared of commitment or just scared of accepting a lot. But for her, she’s very content.
She says that contentment is what drives her desire to try again when something didn't work out. What's the next thing that you can try?
Connect with NoorJehan Tourte
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