Women as Leaders
"When I started the course I had just moved to a new office with a very small team. I now head up a section of over 150 people and I’m certain the skills I developed on the course have been hugely helpful. I certainly believe in supporting other women to achieve their ambitions and I think this support was one reason for my recent ‘Women in the City Award 2008’.
“I chose the Women as Leaders Workshop at a point in my career when I was taking on a new role and felt rather exposed as a woman in a very male work environment,” says Kathryn Britten, Head of Forensic Accounting at BDO Stoy Hayward. “In 2001 there were very few women in senior roles in the company and the Cranfield course seemed a good opportunity to really focus on how I could best harness what I viewed as my leadership strengths in those circumstances.
"I saw my collaborative way of working which aimed to gain colleagues support and alignment as a strength. But I suspected that this style of managing was not necessarily viewed as a strength by others in the firm. At that time one of my major reasons for going on the course was to explore whether I could lead by playing to my own strengths or whether I needed to develop other, more traditional, ‘male’ leadership skills.
"Cranfield was a huge breath of fresh air for me. I came away confident that it was most important to be authentic and be myself and not try and become someone different in order to lead at a senior level. Obviously there were some management skills that I needed to work on but basically I found that I didn’t need to try and be like the men: I just needed to be myself.
"It was very useful to be among a group of like-minded women and the opportunities to network were particularly valuable. Other participants were extremely open about the things they found difficult and there was a huge amount to learn from how they dealt with a range of workplace issues. As there are so few women in senior roles it was basically very reassuring to hear other women’s stories and realise there is nothing odd about yourself after all.
"The course was enlightening and did change me in some ways. I gained much more confidence in my leadership abilities but also recognised that I needed to be rather more flexible in how I approached my colleagues so that they were comfortable too. It was also an excellent opportunity to take stock away from the workplace. I accepted that I will come across people at work who are somewhat dictatorial and being over-sensitive won’t do any good. I had to do some degree of toughening up but without sacrificing my own leadership strengths.
"When I started the course I had just moved to a new office with a very small team. I now head up a section of over 150 people and I’m certain the skills I developed on the course have been hugely helpful. I certainly believe in supporting other women to achieve their ambitions and I think this support was one reason for my recent ‘Women in the City Award 2008’.
"From the feedback I receive I think people feel that I do things differently. But they acknowledge that I have stuck to my beliefs and values and that doing things ‘my way’ can work.”
Kathryn Britten, Head of Forensic Accounting, BDO Stoy Hayward