"Brand Me", A Journey Through Choices for Talented Women

15 June 2010 | Joint Seminar | Warren House, Kingston-upon-Thames, UK

Topic

"Brand Me", A Journey Through Choices for Talented Women, a 2 day workshop for women about to transition into a senior management role

Organizing Committee

Executive Learning Partnership (ELP) together with the McLane Group

The Wall Street Journal Europe Future Leadership Institute

Media Partner

Venue

Warren House in Kingston-upon-Thames (South London), United Kingdom

Date

15/17-6-2010

Event URL

http://www.brandme.org/

Why Brand Me?

Do names like Stefanie Jobs, Jacqueline Welch or Rita Branson strike you? Can you spontaneously name three real world-famous female CEOs?

Women are underrepresented in management positions, yet they start their careers with the same level of education, intelligence and commitment as their male counterparts. Why do companies lose more than half of this pipeline of female talent some 20 years later? The natural balance between masculine and feminine energy is thus often warped in corporate environments. As a result, the few women who do make it up the organizational ladder, have little choice but to conform in one way or another to the male mould.

What do women need in order to move up in the corporate ranks without losing their authenticity? That question was the basis of our endeavour to design a leadership programme to meet the specific development needs of the next generation of women leaders.

We designed a 2 day workshop, called "Brand Me - A Journey Through Choices for Talented Women", that will help female leaders to

consider themselves as a living "brand", whose "unique selling proposition" needs to be clearly identified and positioned
build the confidence and skills to transition successfully into their next leadership role
create a vision and plan to ensure themselves of a future in which they can function to the best of their abilities
rehearse the conversations that need to take place in order to shape such a future
bring balance to their lives by making difficult choices without compromise or guilt

Brand Me can be run as an in-house or multi-client programme. We would welcome the opportunity to customise the design to meet your company's specific needs.

Womenomics

Research by Ceram Business School in France showed that the higher the proportion of female managers in a company, the less the share price dropped in 2008. The report's author, Michel Ferrary, concluded: "feminisation of management seems to be a protection against financial crisis".

Studies from The World Economic Forum, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Goldman Sachs show that women are the 'guarantors of growth'. Nevertheless, women remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions, despite starting their careers with equal (or more) levels of education, intelligence, and commitment than their male counterparts.

Gender is a business issue, not a women's issue:

Talent: One of the most sought after commodities, and female talent is currently underutilized
Mirroring the market: Building a diverse top leadership team, including women, which is representative of the multicultural, heterogeneous markets a company operates in provides a competitive edge and reduces the risk of being blindsided by new business products, services, and models.
Purchasing power: Women represent 50% of the market and make 80% of purchasing decisions. It seems common sense that women would provide valuable input into the way products and services they buy are developed, marketed, and sold.

*Much of the content on this page is attributed to: Why women mean business: Understanding the emergence of our next economic revolution, Wittenberg-Cox & Maitland, 2008

Who Are We?

Brand Me has been developed by Executive Learning Partnership together with the McLane Group. Both companies bring next-generation yet proven interventions in transformation and leadership development, and the Brand Me team has a combined experience of over 75 years in designing and delivering tailored and effective interventions across the different leadership landscapes, ranging from the individual to the macro level.