The ability to be confident, comfortable, composed, and competent in various professional settings is a significant strength that gives an edge to the woman pursuing a professional career. This is especially so for women in leadership roles.
However, the environments they operate in are often challenging to navigate, especially in the absence of structured support systems to amplify these skills and improve their professional effectiveness.
“Just how do I handle high-stakes engagements? Am I communicating effectively to influence outcomes? And what kind of leader am I, and how do I enhance my impact? Am I the only one experiencing this? ”
These are among the common questions that women professionals grapple with regularly without definite conclusions and finding themselves in a continuous cycle of hanging critical questions!
Personal agency in professional environment series
To help them find answers and support them in their professional journey, Jade Communication’s Centre For Applied Human Communication has partnered with the US-based Personal Agency In Professional Environments Series (PAPE), a Workshop and Cohort for Women Professionals in East Africa.
Jade’s CEO, Paul Achar, lauds the partnership with PAPE Series that perfectly aligns with its Applied Human Communication model, which focuses on applying existing communication theory and research to practical situations that clients face in applied contexts.
He says the programme aims to provide a safe space for professional women to enhance their personal growth and create communities that would achieve more significant impact, especially in empowering women.
“ The reality is that PAPE provides an opportunity for professional women leaders from diverse fields, whose paths might have never crossed, to come together and form an empowered support community that will impact other women and create a ripple effect in society.”
BE’s Associates Juliet Erickson, an executive coach, communication specialist and author and Maeve Richards, a diversity, equity and Inclusion expert and coach, are the programme facilitators.
Juliet says: “When we researched and designed the programme some few years ago, our goal was and remains to create a space where women can flourish and transform and benefit from a stronger sense of self, clarity of purpose and confidence.”
Programme Structure
The PAPE Series is designed to equip and enable women with varying capabilities. It focuses on individual strengths and needs to build professional effectiveness through skills development, practice and support from a generative community.
It bridges the potential gap between an intellectual understanding of personal agency goals and their accomplishment.
It is structured as a three-month series comprising ten weekly virtual sessions via Zoom, where two executive coaches meet with a cohort of six to ten participants.
The PAPE Series employs a mix of skill-building lectures and facilitated discussions with recommended homework. In addition, participants can access curated resources, videos, white papers and studies, and one-on-one coaching calls if desired.
The skill-building, cohort content and resources are tailored to the unique circumstances and common experiences that women in professional setups often share. Each session combines relevant discussion and skill development associated with real-world circumstances and upcoming situations.
Skills building
Some of the skills-building content includes a listener-centered approach to planning for high-stakes engagement, communication, presentations, negotiations, and conversations. Also, PAPE provides ways to “read” and respond to others and effectively understand your and their emotional and communication styles.
Individuals are also taught techniques to enhance leadership effectiveness and “presence” when leading an effort, running a meeting, or giving and receiving feedback. Also tackled is dealing with confrontation to achieve better outcomes that create less friction and overcome resistance.
Inner resilience development
During the sessions, participants discuss their strengths, awareness of, sensitivity to, and what they experience in the professional environments where they want to excel. Participants explore their internal capacities and ability to remain calm and confident and engage in credible, competent, and composed ways.
The primary goals are to recognize what is in their ultimate best interest and develop inner resilience. The focus on building up inner resourcefulness and resilience is to produce more constructive, positive, and purposeful responses.
Participants form dyads. The dyad conversations and the sessions enable the participants to build a community of mutual encouragement, insight, and lasting support.
Participants share strategies to leverage mentors, sponsors, allies, and cheerleaders. There is exposure to practices, such as affirmations, self-compassion, ways to calm, and grounding techniques.
The programme culminates with an opportunity to step into the Spotlight to work on a live issue and receive ideas, feedback, and support from the Cohort.
The learning arc is progressive and designed to educate, equip, enable and empower the participants accountable for their learning. They are encouraged to practice the skills, report to the Cohort, and leverage the Cohort to lock in the learning.
In the end, participants experience personal and professional transformation evidenced in a more robust, purposeful and empowered sense of self. The increased effectiveness in influence in both personal and professional positioning leads to greater levels of credibility, trust, acceptance and respect.
But perhaps the main highlight is the reality of warm and sustainable community support.
Kenya Cohort
The experience is evident from the first Cohort that went through the PAPE Series from October 2023 to December 2023. It brought together ten professional women leaders from diverse fields.
Participant Ambassador Dr Josephine Ojiambo says of the programme: “ Women possess undeniably unique leadership styles as well as different yet complimentary professional and personal contributions to those of men. Acknowledging, affirming and adapting these women-centric contributions are central to the ten sessions PAPE training experience.”
The registration is ongoing for the second Cohort, which will run from 26 February to 3 May 2024.