Melissa Smith is the CEO of Wex Inc. a provider of payment processing and information management services in the US, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. They have around 5,000 employees and under Melissa’s leadership the company has gone from $50 million to $1.7 billion in revenue. Melissa began at Wex Inc. in 1997 as a senior financial analyst and she worked her way up to being CFO and then President of the Americas before becoming CEO.  A lot of things in the world have been changed by Covid-19. The way organizations operate, the way employees connect with one another, and even the way leaders have to lead. Melissa Smith, the CEO of Wex Inc., who is responsible for around 5,000 employees around the world says connecting with her people is more important now than ever before. And one important way she does that is through recognizing her people for what they do. She takes time to send handwritten notes to employees who have been promoted, or who have gone above and beyond in a project, or who have volunteered for events in the community. She believes that people need to be recognized with little things like handwritten notes and big things like stock grants. She says it is so important for people to know that their work is recognized and valued. This recognition can actually go both ways. Melissa has been grateful for letters that her employees have been sending her during the pandemic to let her know they appreciate what she does. In fact, she has one employee who sends her a note every single month, and it really means a lot to Melissa. Overcoming internal and external doubt A lot of leaders deal with imposter syndrome at some point or another. In fact, a majority of the leaders I speak with on the Future of Work podcast admit that they have faced internal and external doubt throughout their careers. It just comes with the territory. Leaders are going to have times when they feel they are not right for the job or that they don’t have the skills to complete a task. So how can you overcome those feelings? Melissa says that when it comes to internal doubt it’s all about toning it down. Most likely those thoughts and feelings will never go away completely, but you have to learn to switch that inside voice off. When it comes to external doubt, it is a balancing act. You have to be able to listen to feedback from others and learn to accept constructive criticism. But you also have to be able to recognize if people are just naysayers who question your abilities without reason. For the naysayers you just have to learn how to move on and prove them wrong.  Melissa’s experience as a female leader While Melissa doesn’t really think of herself as a female leader, she does recognize that some people will be surprised when they meet her, especially because of the industry she is in, which tends to be male dominant. In fact when she recalls a time when she was the CFO at Wex Inc. and she and the head of investor relations were on a call with an investor and a portfolio manager that Melissa had not yet met. When both sides went to hang up, the other side of the call thought they had hung up but hadn’t. So she heard a part of their conversation. The portfolio manager was saying “The CFO is a chick”. And the investor that Melissa knew responded and said “Yes, but she’s a geek chick”. And then they went on to talk about the answers to questions they had. What she took away from that experience is that people recognize that she is different and they stop to acknowledge that, but at the end of the day what they really care about is the content of what she has to say. They care about performance and results. When asked if she has to work harder or be tougher as a female leader, Melissa says, “It is different, yeah. Clearly it's different. I think the important part, though, is those things happen. But if you allow that to be kind of the central part of your thinking, so if I start with the fact that it's unfair, then you're almos