COMMENT: I was invited to participate in the 2021 EG Future Leaders programme. At a time when the country was still emerging from Covid-19 lockdowns, I was simultaneously daunted at being back in a room with so many people but looking forward to speaking to others in the sector about their experiences. I was also keen for a new challenge to expend almost 18 months of pent-up energies on, not only to improve myself but also to tackle some wider industry issues.
What I found was a great opportunity to meet and network with an impressive cohort of women from a variety of different backgrounds and circumstances, all of whom were passionate to learn or improve their skills to enable them to give voice to the issues most important to them. Through training touching on everything from how to use body language and tone to create the most impact, to when to pause and place emphasis to land our messages clearly, together we all grew in confidence. By the end of our week, we were empowered to go back and be advocates for change in the areas we had each identified, whether in our organisations, with our clients, or in the wider industry.
Positive change
For me, the issue that I was (and remain) most passionate about really came to the fore during lockdown: how hybrid working can improve gender equality by helping to retain women in business. As someone in a transactional role, where typically senior women are outnumbered by men, it was evident that the increased flexibility brought by the pandemic had already started to bring positive change to women’s working lives.
