Great leaders aren’t born. They are made. And that is the goal of our leadership program that turns good managers into outstanding leaders. We spoke to Lenka, one of the participants, about how the program helped her develop empathy and found similarities with fellow leaders despite different backgrounds. If you want to develop a skill set to be able to motivate, inspire, and lead others, join our fourth cohort and become the leader you’ve always wished you had.
Lenka Drbalova completed the second cohort of the Leadership program shortly before Christmas. She shared with us how it helped her in her career as the Content & Sustainability Manager at GLAMI.
The majority of Lenka’s work experience is linked to online marketing. Apart from the Czech Republic, she has also worked in Scotland, France, and volunteered for a marketing team in China. For the past three years, Lenka has been working for GLAMI, which she joined as a Content Specialist in 2017, and some ten months after that she took over the team of now 15. At GLAMI, they aggregate and categorize the offering from thousands of fashion e-shops to one place - so you can for example filter all the red dresses available in online stores and find the best one for you. At the moment GLAMI is present in 17 countries in Europe and beyond.
A big part of what I do has some relation to leadership (be it the team I lead or the projects I'm responsible for) and I was looking into the ways in which I can learn and do things better. I have visited some offline and online events from Femme Pallete prior to joining the program and I really liked that it brings like-minded women together.
It was invaluable for me to be able to talk with my mentor Kate Funk about things regarding the team or the different situations I was facing throughout the six months. I was also inspired by the drive other women in the program had to learn and grow and to see that the things we are dealing with are often similar no matter our background and that we can learn a lot from each other.
I'm trying to give more context to my decisions or priorities we should work on as a team and be a better listener. And also be less hard on myself, but that one is quite tricky. :)
During one exercise we did at the beginning of the course, I ended up having to select one leadership skill that I find absolutely key - and that for me was empathy. I believe that it is very crucial if you want to work with others no matter the role you are in as it helps you understand the team and motivate and support the people in it. And also I think that every leader should be able to provide vision and guidance. I'm definitely still learning all of these.
Since my mentor lives in Florida, we had our sessions online, but we really clicked from the very first one. I learned the importance of having to lead myself first before I can be of any use to anybody else. We went through our Gallup test results which helped me understand my strengths much more and I also got many great tips for hiring as it's something I'm also responsible for in my team.
I plan to practice what I have learned in my day to day tasks. And I also plan on picking up some of the many books Cristina Muntean mentioned during our workshop.
To keep an open mind and also to take the opportunity to get to know other people going through the program - I'm happy that there is now a community of people who went through it, some of whom I already met during a networking week and I found our conversations both inspirational and motivating.
If you would like to join the group of like-minded women and develop a strong vision to lead a team or become a change-maker in your field, you have until February 2021 to apply for the Femme Palette leadership program. But don’t leave it till the last minute, places are limited!
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