Introducing HERimpact Academy
Introducing HERimpact Academy
I wanted to take a couple minutes to walk you through the HERimpact Academy, but before I do that I want to talk a little bit about how it came about and why I've spent the last few months putting it together.
Over the last three years, I have spoken to well over 10,000 women here locally in the U. S. as well as globally… either via 1:1 coaching, small group coaching or local and global workshops and speaking events, and I've had the honor of speaking with some of the most amazing women in technology as well as a couple of other male-dominated industries. And I've asked them a lot of questions about how it’s working with getting more women into those senior leadership roles.
Unfortunately, there's really an epidemic of it going in the wrong direction. In other words, you're not really growing the female leaders that we like to have. And it’s boiled down to six main things that I've heard over and over and over again why women (both young and senior) are not particularly happy in the workplace.
I've come up with some solutions to those things, so I want to walk you through them really quickly… but I also want to let you know what problems to solve, and why is this important. There are three main things from an overall perspective:
- Reduce turnover
- Improve employee satisfaction and fulfillment
- Support current and emerging women leaders
So that's the whole thing, and it really is based in teaching women how to have the mindset and the habits to close the leadership gap. And based on the my 25 years of experience in applied sport psychology and having the honor of traveling around the world and working with world-class athletes and business professionals, I really boil this down to the science of about six different topics to improve and have solutions for these things.
I'm going to walk you through those, and for now, the HERimpact Academy is going to be a six weeks curriculum that we're going to be rolling out in the next couple months.
So I just wanted to give you a sneak peek. We're going to roll out initially as small group sessions, every other week.
So let me explain it.
Basically, the first session of the month is “foundational” and in the second session we move into “mastery.” Where we start is “CLARITY” and that's really where everything starts because a lot of times we get stuck in our current circumstances and we're a little bit unclear (although we're not particularly happy) we’re a little bit unclear where we want to go. The main ideas I keep hearing over and over and over is that women are feeling over-committed and under supported. I feel I hear that very consistently when we compare all the data that we've gotten and from conversations as well as from women filling out forms.
We're going look at that and provide some solutions for that by helping women to set up a work/life “counter-balance plan.” There's really no such thing as work/life balance (as most of you probably know). We're going help get clarity on what is that work/life counter-balance. And all that means is that sometimes our work will carry us deep… you know, we'll have to be gone either traveling or working long days but sometimes our family, or our relationships, or our personal life requires us as well… so how do we come up with a work/life counter-balance plan so we can start feeling like we're being supported? And also feel we're not over committing ourselves and really falling short with the things that are really important to us.
So that's the first thing… we're going to address in getting clarity so we can stop feeling over-committed and under-supported.
Then we're going to move into week two of the mastery and we're going to gain even deeper clarity so we can stop feeling mediocre even though we're working extremely hard. It's going to take the first session a little deeper because many of us are working extremely hard… and now I have three kids I know I'm probably like a lot of you… trying to juggle a lot of different things. And as I've learned, just because my kids are now off to college and in the real world, it doesn't mean they disappear. You know they still kind require our attention. So whether you have a family that is gone now or they're still around the house (or what have you)… relationships really important. We want to make sure that you are optimizing your impact at work, but also at home… and how we're going to do this is by building a legacy plan and really an accountability structure to make it happen. Get very clear on how do you want to feel at work? How do you want to feel in relationships? What is most important? Inevitably, we want to start thinking about when we're not here anymore… how do we want to be remembered? That way we can start living into that right now and a lot of us haven’t really taken the time to think that out.
So we go pretty deep on clarity, and what that does is it tends to calm us down, reduces some anxiety, and gives us some control so we can start moving towards our best selves. Clarity is where we start foundationally and we move in the mastery.
Months two is “COURAGE.” In order for us to be most courageous and confident, we must really face what we fear. And one of the things that women have been telling me over and over again is that they are really putting limitations on their dreams, and they're not really making the impact that they know that they have within them.
We're going to take that head on by teaching women how to become emotionally agile and more confident… because it is a process. A lot of times people think that some people are born confident and might look at other women other female leaders and think they were just born that way… and they're really not. Confidence is a learned skill, and it's the same framework that I teach world-class athletes and business professionals… even people that are competing in the Olympics and some senior women I work with here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Learned skills… that's the take away. So we're going to learn how to stop putting limitations on our dreams so we can start making more of an impact at work and at home. I really want to emphasize that this is a holistic and sustainable approach. Because if we’re not a high performer and things are kind of falling apart… or sub-optimal at home, we can't really sustain being that high performer work for that long.
We get into the second component, which is the mastery level of courage… and we're going to really face what we fear. Now I know a lot of you are ambitious, and “go-getters” … and you've done amazing things… but we all have fear. The similarities between world-class performers and everyone else… even Olympians and people running companies… is we all have fear and doubt. We're human (unless you’re a robot in which case maybe you don't have it). But everyone has it. Just the difference is that world-class performers know how to keep it at bay… but they also know how to face their fear, and use it to their advantage. Once we do that, once we stop ignoring what we fear, then we're going to be able to effectively unleash our voice. Because I want you to be able to speak up and be heard. And, I'm sure there's times when all of us had something to say (whether it's to our family or in our companies) and we just haven't said it, or we haven't had the reaction or the impact that we know that we wanted.
We're going to go deep into courage in month two, so we can start actualizing our dreams and get very vivid with them… and going after them certainty (and also face what we fear so we can unlock that next level.)
Finally in month three… we cover “INFLUENCE.” Out of the three things that we're talking about in HERimpact Academy… they're all equally as important, but I have a special place in my heart for influence because it is so powerful. This content is based on the science that professional negotiators use in influence to keep people safe…f to talk people off buildings… to do their job optimally. So I take this topic very seriously.
It's very important that we use it for good and not evil… this is very, very powerful. Once we have clarity in our career (what we want) and face what we fear… and then once we have a seat at the table (whether we’re talking to one person or we have a board position and we're talking to a group, or we’re on a stage speaking to many) we need to know how to prepare and construct these crucial conversations.
What this will solve is it can help us stop feeling irrelevant and disrespected. Now this may be kind of a harsh statement, but I've heard that from so many women. It might not be the intention of other people in the room, but that is how women are feeling and it's really not serving them to get to the next level of their leadership.
Learning how to be influential is really going to help women to stop feeling irrelevant and disrespected… and it's how we're going to solve that problem. Teaching women how to influence in a calm and authentic manner. Whether women are just entering the workforce, but especially for more senior women… let's say they’re director level and they want to get to VP. Especially in male-dominated industries which quite frankly are our most industries… but women have had to fight because it's just been really hard. So they had to be a little abrasive sometimes and really kind of “strong arm” their way in there. A lot of women are coming to me saying that other women and men within their organizations they want to support them, but they say that the way they're doing things now, it's not going to get them to the next level because they're not going to be able to lead from there. This is a really important tool for women to get to the next level… whether they are more junior or even more senior at the director level and above, by learning how to influence in a calm and authentic manner.
That's the foundation of month three.
And, then when we move into mastery during month three, we're going to learn how to go deeper in demonstrating influence so women can stop feeling silenced or overlooked. This is going to lean on what's been learned the first two months about clarity and courage because it has to be in this order to be influential, and it's going to require women to be very clear on the outcome… very clear on what they want and where they're going… and it's also going to require them to be courageous.
In order for women to stop feeling silenced or overlooked in crucial conversations for one on one, small group, or from a stage speaking to large groups. We’re going to do this by utilizing advanced tools in persuasion, so women can learn to influence one on one, small groups or from a larger stage.
Persuasion mastery is so powerful and when we see women that are highly influential, they did not pop into this world with those tools. These are tools that are learned skills.
So for women who want to stop feeling over committed and under supported… for women who are maybe ignoring what they fear because they're either afraid to speak up, or they have spoken up and they're really afraid to have a louder voice (or they’re not feeling heard). And, it's also for women who are feeling a little bit irrelevant or disrespected, or they're almost feeling silenced or overlooked.
Once we learn, and take six weeks how to get clear on where your ship the sailing, develop the courage to face what we fear, and also to optimize our emotions in crucial conversations and situations, and learn how to be highly influential in these situation, it's really going to help women to speak up, be heard, and optimize the impact that we as women want and deserve.
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