This Agency Exec Finds Comfort in Controlling Expectations

“She said, ‘I’m paying you to have an opinion and to move this business forward,’ and that was the first time anyone had ever said that to me,” said Munayyer Gonzalez, who has searched for a healthy balance between celebrating her readiness to listen and hiding behind it. 

Separating work and home

She has since reflected on the roots of these tendencies, chalking much of it up to the immigrant mentality instilled by her family that prioritizes earning respect by constantly observing. Her professional attitude has been refined by a career full of “good and bad bosses,” but also lessons from her parents, who always reminded her that you leave your job at the door on your way home from work.

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Since becoming a manager, she is still internalizing that taking charge in a meeting is not a reflection of selfishness.

“It took people taking me out of my resting state of listening and observing to find my voice in a room and believe that it had value,” she said.

Managing a ‘quiet confidence’

Earlier in her career, Munayyer Gonzalez worked to challenge her professional instincts while looking for her place in an industry that rewarded leadership styles that didn’t align with her own. After identifying that successful women at work were often the first to raise their hands in a meeting, she grappled with how to advance as someone who has never felt the need to compete for airtime.

Her solution was to consider how taking up more space was not just a service to herself.

“When you talk about your story, it gives people the opportunity to see themselves in you, whether or not they have anything to do with the life you’ve led,” said Munayyer Gonzalez. “It’s less an opportunity for me to build my brand or say something smart in a room and more about offering someone else a little bit more permission to contribute.” 

Rejecting a one-dimensional identity 

While Munayyer Gonzalez leads with a candor that can foster a more comfortable work environment, she does not subscribe to the trendy notion that coworkers should feel like family. She has found that keeping her personal and professional lives separate has allowed her to craft an identity that is not exclusive to her existence in the workplace. This has in turn created a more stable sense of self-worth.

Her leadership career began with the self-inflicted expectation to keep her team unwaveringly happy. Since then, Munayyer Gonzalez has learned to keep her role in perspective by recognizing that when work does not control life, the idea that she can single-handedly enable her team’s personal fulfillment is both unrealistic and self-important. 

“All I want is for the people who work here to be happy, but there is only so much I can do to control someone else’s happiness,” she said. “I focus on creating the best work environment so they can find happiness here and elsewhere.”

WORK HISTORY

Mona Munayyer Gonzalez is the chief growth officer at Pereira O’Dell, an independent creative agency based in San Francisco. She was also recently named to a dual role as chief growth officer of Serviceplan Americas, a new division of Europe’s largest independent agency network, Serviceplan Group. Before holding various positions at Pereira O’Dell, which included president of the East region and managing director, Munayyer Gonzalez was an account director at The Barbarian Group and an account supervisor at BBDO. In 2019, she became a founding member of Chief, a network of senior executive women focused on strengthening leadership skills.