From the early days of her career, the leadership approach taken by South African businesswoman Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane has been to work with what she found. She realised that to achieve success in an organisation one needs to be “on the ground” and to interact with those at shop-floor level. Equipped with determination and empathy, and bolstered by her father’s belief that she could do anything her brothers could, she faced down any potential prejudices against her because she was black and female, irrefutably showing those labels to be irrelevant in contemporary business.

Hers is an extraordinary story but, as she shows, it doesn’t have to be a unique story. Drawing from her own experience, she has formulated a leadership philosophy of valuing diversity and engaging employees as fully as possible.

It’s a template whose seven steps are clear and accessible, and its results empowering.

Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane is a black female success story in modern South Africa. From humble apartheid-era beginnings in Peddie in the Ciskei, she now heads up one of the leading coal export terminals in the world and influences the upper strata of corporate South Africa. But stories like hers are all too rare, even in an age of increasing female empowerment. Passionate about women (and youth) development in Africa, she wants to hasten the change and see more women thrive.

In Finding The Woman Within, Siwisa-Damasane recounts the struggles of her upbringing and the lessons she has learnt in her path to the top, from the challenges of completing her schooling after becoming a teenaged mother to managing corporate dynamics when she’s the only woman in the room.

The book offers simple lessons for transformational leadership from a woman in a man’s world covering, among other topics, the importance of personal responsibility, inclusive leadership, employee engagement, positive management of corporate politics, work-life balance and continuous learning.