How leadership training changed my life

Many times in women circles we talk of leadership as a far-fetched topic and we always want to attribute it to other people who we think are more deserving of it, so much to an extent where we even sabotage ourselves just to avoid it.

When Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi said that more than anything, girls need to be taught about leadership and taking up space at a young age, it did not immediately ring a bell to me until 2020 happened.

Society has obviously laid some glass ceilings for women, and there are always those connotations about women who take up leadership positions, some without proper training but sheer rebellion, negotiation or courage to challenge the status quo.

While 2020 could go down the history lane as one of the worst years ever, for my personal transformation journey it was one of the best years as I got my very first opportunity to learn about leadership and eventually stripped of my fear of taking up space in matters that require the best part of my brain.

I painstakingly avoided this topic for years because of I struggled a lot with negative self-talk and even though I had a track record of times I had stepped up to take up leading positions in certain things I just could not see myself warming up to the fact that with training and grooming, I could actually bring out the best version of the leader in me.

A consortium of three organizations made a call for applications for a women's leadership programme late 2019 and it took a lot of persuasion if not coercion from my immediate boss to apply, to an extent where he literally had to sit me down and see to it that I had submitted the application after two weeks of a cat-and-mouse chase with me refusing to do it because I never thought I could make the cut.

Over the years I had built networks that led to organizations being founded. I had organized events and candid discussions, as well as being elected into boards and committees, but that was not enough to convince me that I could actually be a changemaker in my own small way for the greater good.

When the email came through that I had been accepted into the programme I was excited and nervous—nervous because I did not know what to expect as this was going to be my first time ever to be admitted into something that was that clear about grooming mid-career women on leadership.

We had our first face-to-face session in January 2020 and if I say I was dragged out of my comfort zone that would be the understatement of the year. The weeklong process saw me revisiting dreams I had shelved for years and wasn't going back to any time soon.

I realized in that week that I was going through life on auto-drive as I had stopped dreaming for some time and that was badly affecting my creativity because I no longer had the motivation to work on something new. Everything had become too much work for me.

With the coming of Covid-19, getting into the programme availed us the chance to go through counseling, which was such a big deal for our mental health because now we could be more effective as leaders even during a global pandemic.

For the first time, I got to do a vision board, a business canvas as well as the wheel of life. As working women, it is very easy to get lost in the maze that many call work-life balance, but we got to hear from powerful women who have walked the journey to the top sharing their experiences and the importance of emotional intelligence.

By the end of the first week, two questions were standing out: Who am I and why do I matter? Once I began searching the answers to these questions, I realized that instead of focusing on one thing that I am really passionate about, all these years I was trying to be a jack of all trades and master of none.

This got me thinking about myself as a brand, and that is when I started seeing how much I had underestimated my abilities to suit certain narratives because I feared instability and that meant wandering about life with no clear goals of where I want to be professionally, therefore delaying my journey to becoming the changemaker that I have always wanted to be.

A nine-month mentorship phase then started soon after the face-to-face session, and boy oh boy did my life change! I was paired with such an amazing woman leader in civil society who made me realize that indeed, there is room at the top as much as there is a seat for me at the table.

In those nine months I grew personally, emotionally and spiritually so much that I started being deliberate about my actions and how I spend my time and on what. I got to realize that for women who want to be leaders, all these versions of their lives: the spiritual, personal, social and professional are intertwined, therefore every action counts.

If ever there is a stereotype that I will forever scoff at, it is the one that insinuates that women hate seeing each other succeed because during that period, what I got to experience was the total opposite.

I was expecting my first child that time, and had a number of projects in the pipeline, so my mentor taught me how to treat every project like the baby I was expecting. When you are pregnant you want to eat well, sleep well and take good care of yourself so you can have a healthy baby. That is how you should treat those things you truly care about when you aspire to be a leader.

Leaders are readers, and throughout that journey I started the habit of setting for myself reading targets and the wealth of knowledge I got from that habit is tremendous.

By the time I graduated from the programme in December 2020, I had become totally different from whom I was before being admitted and more than ever, I am now conscious of what is expected of me as a woman whose voice should count, especially when it is so easy to get your voice drowned in male dominated spaces.

It takes a lot of learning to be a leader and a brand, and it requires continuous personal development and for me, just being aware of that is what younger women need so that unlike me, they can have an early start to leadership training.

Building networks that matter is one of the key reasons why young women end up thinking that the road to the top is too cumbersome and not worth the sweat, but I was privileged enough to meet all those amazing women, learn from them, build relationships and be a better person.

Now imagine how much change we could get if I had gotten that opportunity earlier in life, and I had been sharpening my skills all this while. I believe if programmes like this could be brought down to schools targeting girls we could have the kind of leadership that has so much to do with vision and responsibility than power.