Why have separate leadership development programmes for women?

Great strides have been made over the last two decades in the recognition of women’s leadership skills and in the development and advancement of women as leaders. We believe, however, that there are gender differences that subtly impact a woman’s ability to climb ladders.

Business women differ from men in style, not in skill.

It’s critical for all our clients to balance their personal and professional lives, but women tend to be most affected by balance issues. Women must make decisions that are more personally impacting for them than for men, such as when to get pregnant, when to take on assignments requiring extensive travel, how to manage sexual dynamics that are not outright harassing but that create discomfort, and how to play office politics without losing one’s feminine values. Therefore, we offer services that support women in developing themselves and advancing their careers.

Coaching for Women’s Leadership Development

In addition to our executive and corporate coaching services, we provide specialized coaching programs for women that tend to focus on abilities such as finding one’s voice, identifying a career path, gaining and maintaining visibility, developing mentoring relationships, finding and maintaining balance, and building informal networks to advance career progress.

Our programs are custom designed to meet the needs of our clients. We advocate combining coaching with learning labs in order to provide women with a process of individualized support as well as shared learning. Coaching supported by workshops at which women can share their experiences and their learnings helps to sustain success by building a community of women leaders.

Trudy Arthurs has successfully delivered programmes for women in business. She is well-qualified to do so.

Trudy was brought up in a successful entrepreneurial family in Co. Kilkenny. In the early 1980s she became a Eurobond trader in London and Zurich. As the only woman in that particular trading floor, she cheerfully rose above a good deal of sexist abuse and became a successful trader and also fluent in German and French. She began to suffer “burn-out” and chose to leave the finance sector in the late 1980s. Thereafter she took training in various therapeutic disciplines at the same time as setting up a direct marketing business until a brush with cancer in 2000 caused her to redirect her efforts to coaching. She has focussed especially on personal and business development for women. Trudy has developed and delivered several programmes specifically for women including:

PROGRAMME TITLE	LENGTH	REPEATED	CLIENT
Career Advancement for Women	3-month	7 times: 2004-2006	Castlereagh Enterprise Centre
Personal Development for Women	3-month	7 times: 2004-2006	Castlereagh Enterprise Centre
Extraordinary Women Entrepreneurs	9-month	3 times: 2006-2008	Private individuals in group and individual sessions
Personal Leadership Development	6-month	4 times: 2008-2009	PSNI; individual sessions

To see how DL can be of assistance to you or your organisation, either email us or call us on + 44 (0)771 409 6553 to arrange your initial Exploration Session.

We’re here to help.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.
Wangari Maathai