Hi everyone, and happy spring! We have had two amazing weeks of nice temperatures here in Poland, which makes such a big difference in everyone’s demeanors—people smile more and are generally easier going.
For today’s post I wanted to share a peek into my involvement with the Academy of Female Business Leaders, which is a program organized by the Lesław A. Paga Foundation. McKinsey is a strategic partner of the academy, which is how I got involved. I have had the pleasure of working with a wonderful group of young women on four separate events. I’ll share the first two here and the next two in a post next week.
The first event was a workshop on enhancing communication skills. The attendees really appreciated the tips and tricks, which they found quite practical, and applied these tips to tell their stories more effectively. I led a breakout session of women with very diverse academic backgrounds—women studying medicine, law, business, etc.—who took turns telling their stories and providing feedback to one another. Given their backgrounds, they all focused on different topics, but nonetheless were able to provide valuable feedback to one another on content, delivery, and presence.
Two weeks later, we held a day-long workshop based on McKinsey’s Centered Leadership approach. As usual, this content was very popular with the attendees! I joined two other consultants and shared stories about how Centered Leadership has been important in my daily work. In presenting my stories and answering questions, I learned about myself, too: I use different techniques now than I did a few years ago, and I learned about different frameworks that I want to use more in my daily work. It was a great affirmation and reminder of skills that can improve my work and leadership.
We gave the attendees each a copy of How Remarkable Women Lead, although it turned out many of the women had already read it and loved it! If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it.
Stay tuned to learn about the third and fourth events.
Anna