At times, it feels like a challenge to find women in senior leadership to talk and share with—not because they aren’t willing to share or mentor. In fact, polling by the Pew Research Center indicates that Americans view women business leaders, when compared to their male counterparts, as more honest, ethical, fair distributors of pay and benefits, and yes, more  willing to offer mentorship.

But, as the online recruiting service Zippia reports, as of 2020 women hold just 35% of top management positions in the U.S., despite them making up approximately half our workforce. On the global scale, that chasm is even bigger, dropping to just 24%, according to the Nichols College Institute for Women’s Leadership. So, it’s not the will or the intent. Women simply aren’t in as many organizational senior leadership roles.

This data is why I was intrigued when From Day One asked to me to talk with Joanna Price in a fireside chat titled, “Women on the Path to Leadership: Making It a Purposeful Journey from the Start,” at From Day One’s Atlanta conference. Joanna is the Coca-Cola Company’s senior vice president and chief of public affairs, communications, and sustainability. Basically, she’s one of the 24%.

I saw the conversation as an opportunity to help me and the audience understand the paths women take to leadership roles, as well as their  unique challenges along the way. As our conversation got underway, Price had no qualms making the business case for women in leadership.

“Diversity around a table in any situation is really important, for women in particular,” she said. “Women come to the table with different life experiences. [Women are] wired differently. We think differently. We ask different questions. So having women at the table, [they] are going to problem-solve in a different way, ask a different set of questions that may lead corporations to a different solution that they hadn’t thought of before.”

For Price, leading in today’s landscape means thinking worldwide. According to her, “Global experience is necessary.” The native Australian has held roles across globe from Sydney, Hong Kong and Shanghai to the southeastern U.S. For Price, valuing different cultures is an imperative for quality leadership. “When you go and live and work in another country, all of your norms—your go-tos—aren’t going to necessarily work. You have to be that type of leader who is curious, who’s going to ask a lot of questions, ask [for] different points of views, because your norms could be very wrong,” she warned. “You’re in a situation where you’re going to be uncomfortable. Everything’s new. That’s a really important skill.”

Her emphasis about letting go of norms and leaning into differences made me think about an axiom I heard her say: “Operate in the gray.” She says the right choices are not necessarily obvious. Price unequivocally stressed that leaders should customize solutions for the problems at hand. “I permanently operate in the gray,” she said, “because for a lot of what I do, there is not necessarily a hard-and-fast, right-or-wrong answer. It’s ‘How do I find that best path forward [and what’s] going to be the right thing for the business?’”

While listening to Price chronicle her career, including 20 years with Coca-Cola, I had a thought: Price may be willing to pivot and change, but how do leaders like her help their workforce adopt the same mindset? In essence, how can leaders help their followers navigate change?

Price says we must remember that change is always going to be a part of our future. “I look at change as an opportunity [to] reset,” she said. “You could learn a new skill; you might get a chance to work in a different part of the business or something new. It’s a chance to reskill or reformat up in a different way.”

I am still thinking about our conversation that day—and her final clarion calls to every leader: Be a good listener; know yourself; and surround yourself with people who are smarter, brighter than you. It’s advice that Joanna not only preaches but illustrates as a woman and leader in a global business.

Nicole D. Smith is the editorial audience director for Harvard Business Review, where she and her team create strategies to sustain, build, and find new digital readership and audiences. Prior to HBR, Nicole was the arts and entertainment editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She also has held social-media strategist roles for Essence magazine and worked as a video journalist at CNN.