Venue: The Ace Olivia Hall, City Mall, Onikan, Lagos.
Date: 10th December 2016.
Founder’s Opening Remarks
Welcome to the 2016 WISCAR Annual Mentoring and Leadership Event. It is an event we have dedicated to:
Recognising and showcasing women who have done unusual things;
Applauding women who have achieved uncommon success in their careers; and
Learning of the roads these extraordinary women have walked on their journey to success.
We are also here to congratulate our mentees for 2016 who have completed our W.I.N.-with-WISCAR mentorship programme and to welcome the incoming mentees for 2017.
“May we live in interesting times” is a saying that has often been attributed to the ancient Chinese. It has, however, been argued that it came much later and that it was first publicly pronounced by Sir Austen Chamberlain in 1936. Sir Austen Chamberlain was the older half-brother of Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) until the beginning of the 2nd World War. The decade that preceded that greatest and most destructive war was indeed an interesting time. It was a decade fraught with great peril, of war and of the looming destruction of civilization. However, at every stage, there were opportunities for both inspired individuals and well intentioned groups to intervene to stem the march to war and herald global prosperity. Indeed, Sir Austen Chamberlain had been one such inspired individual when, as Foreign Secretary of the UK in 1925, he negotiated the Locarno Pact that prevented war between Germany and France. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for that endeavour.
We are now also living in interesting times. We are all witnesses to the shock of the UK Brexit result in July this year. We have also lived through the November election of an anti-globalist, inward looking and sectionalist leader in the United States of America. These events appear related and seem to be the beginning of a sweeping ultra nationalist tendency in the West. This must be of great concern to all of us in that Africa is yet to show any capacity for good management of its affairs. Accordingly, a disconnected world may further slow Africa’s development.
I have touched on all these subjects to highlight the crucial importance of leadership during this turbulent period. It is only through good, innovative and effective leadership that our communities and our businesses can be shepherded through the negative developments around the world. That is why we have chosen as the theme for this year’s event, “Women Rising: Transforming Leadership”.
“Transforming leadership” can either mean an existing leadership that is transformed, or a leadership that transforms society. Our theme refers to both meanings.
It has been said that transformational leadership is one that does all the following:
- Creates an inspiring vision of the future;
- Motivates and inspires people to engage with that vision;
- Manages delivery of the vision; and
- Coaches and builds a team so that it is more effective at achieving the vision.
How do women help to transform leadership?
We must first establish the access of women into leadership positions. McKinsey & Company (McKinsey) started to conduct annual studies on Women in Leadership Roles in 2007. They published the results of the studies in publications titled “Women Matter”. The latest edition of Women Matter, Africa was published in August 2016. The publication had three main findings. They are briefly summarised as follows:
- Although Africa has more women in executive committees of private sector companies than the worldwide average, women are still under-represented at every level and only 5% of women make it to the very top.
- Although the number of women in government, including cabinet positions and the legislature has almost doubled over the last 15 years, women are nevertheless under-represented and their numbers would have to double to achieve gender equality.
- Despite some rises in the number of women in leadership positions, women do not necessarily have more power or influence since they tend to be pushed into the less impactful, peripheral positions.
The importance of women in leadership is emphatically demonstrated by data in the Women Matter, Africa Report. The Report stated that:
The result of our African research published in this report show that the earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin of companies in the top quartile in terms of the share of women on their boards was on average a fifth higher than the industry average.
It is because leadership is of such critical importance, now, that the role of women must neither be overlooked nor underestimated.
WISCAR was started to help to correct the under-representation of women in the upper reaches of both corporate and government institutions. It was clear that many otherwise talented and industrious women were frustrated out of the work place by several factors. These include child birth and the consequent loss of institutional seniority, lack of domestic support and, perhaps most critically, a shortage of female exemplars to whom they could turn for mentorship. WISCAR was set up to address the lack of mentorship opportunities.
The W.I.N.-with-WISCAR mentoring programme is a structured and practical one-on-one twelve-month mentoring programme based on a focussed selection and matching of mentors with mentees. The significant feature of the programme is interplay between mentors and their mentees. We have always believed that match-up to be the lynchpin of the programme. However, other features of each year’s programme are:
- The twelve-month structured mentoring programme
- Three career seminars (WISCAR school of excellence)
- A minimum of four face to face meetings between mentor and mentee
- Four book reviews
- Two book readings facilitated by subject matter experts
- Three mentoring circles (including our meet-a-WISCAR and speed mentoring events)
- A mid programme review
- An end of programme evaluation
- This annual event.
I seize this opportunity to specially thank all the women who have, over the years, agreed to serve as WISCAR mentors. Most of you have not only given unstintingly of your time, you have also opened your homes to your mentees and sometimes shared confidences with them. We are eternally grateful to all our mentors. I also thank WISCAR’s Patrons, the Advisory Board and Sub-Committee Members; Facilitators of WISCAR’s various training curriculums, and the staff of WISCAR. Finally, let me specially thank WISCAR’s many volunteers. They have played a great part in keeping WISCAR running.
The WISCAR programme has been an unqualified success and has had a tremendous impact on the mentees. Many of them begin to see the impact on their careers and, indeed, their overall lives within a few months of their commencing the one year mentorship programme. Many have been promoted, some given significantly higher responsibilities or they found a more fulfilling new job within a few months of beginning the programme. Employers have also felt the positive impact of the programme in the marked improvement in performance of employees who have graduated from the WISCAR mentorship programme. We have noted the increasing interest in the WISCAR programme of the staff of certain multi-national companies. Although that is not part of our plans for attracting candidates for mentorship, it is testament to the impact and effectiveness of the WISCAR mentorship programme.
It is important to note that the WISCAR programme is substantially free. The costs of the programme are met from donations. We believe that the sterling results of the programme are a validation of the efforts of everyone involved in the WISCAR programme, from the Advisory Board Members, the programme facilitators and the volunteers who give so much of their time, to the donors who have given of their money. I encourage you all to donate generously to this worthy and career sustaining cause.
To the mentees we will induct today, I welcome you wholeheartedly to the beginning of a year of hard work, a year of discovery and a year of fulfilment. I exhort you to seize the opportunity WISCAR offers you with your heart and your soul.
To the graduating mentees, I congratulate you on your hard work. Please go out and be leaders. WISCAR has equipped you with many of the attributes that are necessary for a leadership role but the most important quality you need is one that you must acquire by yourselves. I speak of that indefinable but obligatory quality; character. Let me quote General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Desert Storm 1,
“Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If one must be without one, be without strategy”
I thank you all for being here with us this morning. I thank all our sponsors and others who have contributed, in one way or the other, to this event. WISCAR is a great cause and you can be proud of your support for her.
Perhaps for relief in these hard and uncertain times, I will leave you with the last stanza of A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Let us, then, be up and doing
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
