YOU ARE YOUR BIGGEST INVESTMENT

This year’s Wacl Future Leaders are sending the industry a clear and simple message: that the skillsets women need in order to move up in their careers lie firmly in personal development and self-belief, Jackie Stevenson writes

The Wacl Future Leaders Award is a programme started by Tess Alps in 2005 while she was Wacl’s president, providing women across our industry with financial awards to spend on training that will equip them to make the journey to the boardroom. We believe that, as members of Wacl, we should be helping fellow women get to senior-level positions – by sharing learning and skills we have gathered on our own journeys and by supporting and nurturing future talent.

As Nina Jasinski, chief marketing officer at Ogilvy & Mather Group UK and current Future Leaders chair, said when we embarked on finding the class of 2017: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” And with diversity still our industry’s number one priority, helping future female leaders make that leap is essential for everyone’s future.

The great news is there’s a huge amount of serious female talent in our industry. With just under 200 entries across every discipline and role, it was the largest and most diverse set of applications we have ever received. The calibre was also incredible. So many women not only spend time on their careers but learn from third- sector and charity projects that they contribute to or even started up.

But the real insight came with the courses they chose, painting an interesting picture of the skills our future female leaders feel they need to help them move on and up in the workplace.

A whopping 65% chose a course they felt would help them build their confidence – confidence to lead a team, to communicate in effectively, to build self-belief. In addition, 49% wanted to learn more about leadership and the skills needed to become part of management or a board member – formulating leadership styles, understanding the psychology of teams and decoding boardroom language.

What was loud and clear from these results? That even our industry’s most forward-thinking women feel they need help to build confidence and support to develop the behaviours of a “leader”. They had identified a truth we’re only just beginning to get to grips with: many women believe working hard and being good at your job is what you need to get on when, in reality, that’s only half the battle.

Kathryn Jacob, former Wacl president and co-author of The Glass Wall, often talks about women holding themselves back and their belief that they have to be 100% perfect at their current role before taking the next step. She says: “Women can fall into a belief that being quietly excellent in your current role is enough. They express a reluctance to push themselves forward and to seek the spotlight. Sadly, many find out too late this strategy tends to get you nowhere.”

So our current Future Leaders are sending us all a message and it’s a simple one. That the skillsets you need if you really want to move on sit firmly in personal development and self-belief. That being confident is a good thing. That it’s important to learn early the broader skills of being a great leader. That being curious beyond your remit will be applauded and exploring areas beyond your own discipline that make a company tick is essential.

The winners of this year’s Patricia Mann Award – the overall prize, named after a former Wacl president – are a great testament to the different types of leader you can be. Developing your own style is crucial – there is no “one size fits all” and all the old leadership clichés are just that: clichés. (And we all need to learn to code if we’re to be relevant in the future!)

We are hugely proud that we have helped this incredibly talented group of women take a huge step forward and are delighted to share the courses they have chosen to inspire more women to be ambitious, look broader and believe in themselves.

However, we’re keen to go further and continue to work inside the industry to help tackle issues head-on. We need more schemes such as Charlotte Beers’ inspired X Factor programme at WPP and Dentsu Aegis Network’s One initiative, pioneered and supported by our own Waclers Annette King and Tracy De Groose.

In the words of Maya Angelou: “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.” To all our ass-kicking Future Leaders winners and applicants, we salute you. And to all the fabulous women in our industry, whatever your age or stage in your career, grab your destiny by the scruff of the neck and make personal development as much of a priority as professional development.