Upcoming course: Flicking the Female Leadership Switch

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Facilitator: Me, Fi Deehan

When: Thursday, 21st March

Where: University of Canterbury, Executive Education

Included: CliftonStrengths Top 5 Assessment, workbook, morning tea and lunch, free parking

More information and booking

Why a leadership course just for women?

For a range of reasons, some women feel most comfortable in a group that does not include men. For some women, this environment feels like a safer space for them to be more vulnerable and open about their professional experiences and connect with others who are more likely to have experienced the same or similar. This course exists to hold the space for learning and growth that these women seek out.

What does Flicking the Female Leadership Switch mean?

Following some personal reflection and asking a whole bunch of women from a range of sectors and roles (some aspiring to move into leadership roles and some already holding positions of leadership) for their perspective on this, an analysis of their answers (see below), all pointed towards the word ‘confidence’. All of the answers given require a certain level of CONFIDENCE that we need to step into the leadership and professional opportunities that we want. With that in mind, the first thing we do in the course is define confidence, bust some myths about it and introduce a framework for developing and building confidence. After this, we ask the question ‘What barriers or challenges do/have you faced in your leadership journey?’ where we capture the answers and park them to look at the end of the day when we are developing our action plan.

Understanding confidence to grow confidence

What does the course provide?

You can find the course objectives here.

This one-day introductory course will help you begin to understand your own pathway to leadership potential, recognising the formidable skills you have that can be transferred to leadership roles.
You will learn about your leadership style, focus on the professional development needed to achieve your future goals and learn ideas for lifting your leadership profile.
You will leave with tools that can be used immediately in your current job and the confidence and focus needed to propel you on your leadership journey in future roles.

And here's a summary of how we will meet these objectives:

CliftonStrengths - Self-awareness and leading self

A fundamental piece in growing and cultivating confidence is self-awareness and in this course, we utilise the CliftonStrengths assessment to help the women who join us to better understand themselves, give them the language to articulate what they are good at and provide space to for them to explore how they might harness this new information about themselves to grow as leaders and to thrive personally and professionally. As a CliftonStrengths coach myself who reflects on my own ‘superpowers’ regularly, I can personally speak to the impact of this approach.

PACE - Self-awareness, leading self and leading others

The third piece of the course puzzle is the PACE model as a leadership practice. Rebekah and I, who developed this model, noticed a call for a new style of leadership that focuses on developing and growing self-awareness, being intentional in our actions and improving how we lead by looking inward. We decided that we wanted to develop a model that helped existing and aspiring leaders to answer that call. We had both personally undertaken significant exploration and change in our lives as a result of the self-awareness we developed through a range of practices and considering what we were hearing from the business world, we wanted to develop a programme that would support others with this journey. We believe that adopting PACE© as a way of leading holds benefits for the leader themselves, the people they lead and the culture of the contexts in which they lead, including workplaces, homes and communities. You can read more about the model here.

Action plan - Understand our barriers, decide what needs to happen next and how to turn this plan into action

The final part of the course is to identify how what we’ve learned can address the barriers and challenges we wrote down earlier along with deciding on our next steps and turning that plan into action. Nothing changes if nothing changes and if there is no plan, how can you decide what actions will create the change you want to see?

This is the time to decide on how you will apply what you have learned to help you flick that leadership switch into developing and growing your confidence to be the leader you want to be. This is where you will decide on the next steps on your path so that you leave the course with something tangible, practical and actionable.

If it sounds like this is something you need any want, the registration link is below.

Any questions, just ask.