Southern Co. exec: A career doesn’t always follow a straight line

Southern Co. executive Bentina Terry calls herself a “recovering lawyer.” She remembers a sense of trepidation after she left a big corporate law firm and eventually joined the utility’s subsidiary, Georgia Power.

Although she’s a lawyer with an English degree, she realized that the best way to advance at the electric utility was to go into operations.

So she went out into the field, visiting an Austell facility to speak to a group of engineers, linemen and customer service representatives, and “it was perhaps one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life.”

“The very first day, when I walked into the assembly room … there was a lot of skepticism in the crowd,” Terry said during a keynote speech at the Georgia Chamber’s “Women Who Lead” event last month. “Those linemen were sitting back there with their arms crossed … I was as afraid of them as probably they were afraid of me.”

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, my God, am I ready? Can I do this?,’” she said.

Terry had started her career as an associate at Troutman Sanders, the corporate law firm now known as Troutman Pepper Locke.

At Georgia Power, she wondered: “How can I lead this team of people when I couldn’t do their jobs, when I didn’t know everything that they did?”

It’s been about 25 years since Terry joined the company, and she is now CEO of Southern’s wireless communication subsidiary, Southern Linc, and fiber optic subsidiary, Southern Telecom.

“If you looked at where I started and looked at where I ended up, you cannot draw a straight line. It’s one with all kinds of squiggly points,” Terry said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

She also took a lesson learned from that meeting in an Austell assembly room after she went into her role in operations at Georgia Power: “Leadership rarely begins with certainty.”

“It begins with courage in the face of a challenge, and that means standing in that room,” she said.

Terry sat down with AJC Her+Story to share the advice she gives to young people pursuing a path to leadership, her favorite restaurant for a business lunch downtown and what some people get wrong about Atlanta.

Edited for length and clarity.

Q: What’s your morning routine?

A: I get up between 5:30 and 6 o’clock. I try to work out.

I listen to my text messages and all that stuff in the car on the way to work. I kind of do the, ‘Siri read my unread text messages’ thing. I used to do that at the house, but now I find that it’s more efficient for me to do it the car, and it can help me respond to the text messages.

Q: What’s one mistake you’ve made that transformed how you approached your career?

A: I am very strong-willed, some might say hardheaded, and I run on intuition and I move fast.

So some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my career are when I wasn’t thoughtful, when I didn’t take the time.

You have to listen, and you have to make sure that you get the right information from the right people. The times when I’ve not been successful have been because I believed I knew everything and didn’t take the time and energy to make sure I fully had a complete understanding or grasp of the situation.

Q: Is there an example?

A: Yeah. When I was down in Florida working for another Southern Co. subsidiary, I had come up with a new way to design the organization. It was me and the HR person, (we) sat in a room over a couple of meetings, and we redesigned the organization. And looking back now, that even sounds crazy, but that’s the way we did it.

And what I didn’t know or understand was the impacts of some of those decisions looked different to the employees because of decisions that had been made previously.

So I just didn’t really have the context to know and understand that what I was thinking I was doing was one thing, but what employees were going to see or how they were going to take it was going to be completely different.

If I had taken the time and energy to make sure I understood the culture and a little bit more about the history, then I would have seen the impact of those things on the employees from a cultural standpoint.

Those might have still been the right things to do, but I could have presented them in a way that acknowledged the experience that the employees had had previously and made sure that I could say: I know this feels like or sounds like or looks like this to you, but let me talk about why it’s different.

But I didn’t know, and I didn’t stop long enough to try to figure that out.

Q: What are the best things someone can do to distinguish themselves in a job interview?

A: I tell people to go into a job interview and be authentic.

You know, we all have to code switch. It’s kind of funny to me that we talk about code switching like everybody doesn’t do it. Everybody code switches. You talk one way around your family. When you’re in a business setting, you need to be business appropriate.

I don’t mean don’t recognize that, but be who you are. … If you decide to go into that interview not being who you are, and then you show up (for work) as you are, it may not be a good fit.

Q: What’s your favorite restaurant for a business lunch?

A: I love A Mano. It is on Ralph McGill (Boulevard). It is not far from my work (downtown). But I also like it. There’s a server there who is just the most delightful person. She’s just so upbeat and so friendly.

If I want pasta that day or if I want a nice sandwich, it’s really good. It’s convenient and easy, and so that’s one of the places I love to go to.

Q: What is your best Atlanta parking secret?

A: I have an electric vehicle, and I feel like that gives me an advantage. I have a 2016 Tesla. There tends to be an EV (charging) spot available when there’s not always a regular spot available. So I can pull into an EV spot.

Q: What do you love most about Atlanta?

A: I always say Atlanta feels like these are my people. I love the mix of sophistication, but still very much Southern. I like to think that that’s kind of what I am. One of my favorite restaurants is the Busy Bee — I love a good Southern home-cooked meal, but I like to put on a pair of heels and a pretty dress and be a little sophisticated. And I feel like that’s what Atlanta is, and it’s just a place that I feel very comfortable.

Q: What breaks your heart about Atlanta?

A: That everybody doesn’t get to experience Atlanta the way I experience Atlanta. In two ways.

One is, there’s tremendous inequality in wealth. There are a lot of people in Atlanta who struggle. That breaks my heart to see that everybody is not allowed to live to their full potential in Atlanta.

And then the second thing is, to outsiders who view Atlanta, they view it through the lens of what they’ve seen on Bravo.