The Womenwill Leadership Workshop by Google – For women, by women

The Womenwill Leadership Workshop was an initiative conducted by Google. The world’s most used search engine had invited its premium partners to nominate the inspiring female leaders of their organisations. Rachna Ganatra – Head of Strategy and Business Development – represented Social Beat in the workshop. The event was geared towards understanding gender disparity issues that women face at work. It also threw light on how to overcome systematic and personal barriers in career success, building confidence, recognising and creating strong connections and making a robust personal plan to move ahead.

The workshop was conducted by the very accomplished and vibrant team of woman entrepreneurs Jinny Riat and Neha Kalia who used a lot of storytelling and kept the audience engaged throughout the workshop. It was amazing how participants opened up about challenges, personal experiences and collectively worked on exercises that were geared towards a lot of self-reflection and taking ownership to drive solutions.

Key takeaways from the workshop

• Understanding gender disparity in digital agencies
  • Women in digital agencies make up 53% of entry-level employees but only 19% become C-Level executives.
  • 7% of leadership positions within Google Premier Partners are held by Women.
  • Campaign Diversity Research shows that only 9% of leadership positions within the industry are held by women, while 89% of women are motivated to lead.

• Recognising our unconscious bias: This requires a lot of mindfulness to understand and classify the bias as it occurs in our own thoughts first. Brands need to use logic and build a common ground to deal with each of the following:
  • Likeability Bias
  • Performance Evaluation Bias
  • Performance Attribution Bias
  • Maternal Bias
• Tips to get rid of self-doubt that most women suffer from: It was an eye-opener to learn from Google that women are the worst critics of themselves. As per recent Google statistics, a woman applies for a job when she has a requirement level of 90%, but a man applies when the level is just 60%. Also, women are bad negotiators when it comes to salary.
• Accepting your achievements and owning them is clearly important and women should train themselves to understand that they deserve it all. The “I AM REMARKABLE” session, conducted by Sujatha Kumar, was specially designed to get participants to recognise their key qualities and why they were remarkable both at work and personal life.

The day-long workshop was a wonderful opportunity for self-learning and reflection. Additionally, the attendees shared space with other exceptional women in the industry, with a lot of bonding over wonderful personal experiences. Since Social Beat is an organisation which has more than 65% women in its workforce, the insights were really helpful and inspirational.

However, it was not all about learning. The venue, decor, goodies and food were all tastefully done with a thematic layout across. Not only was the workshop extremely enriching and enlightening, but it also had a vibrant ambience, accounting for a day of laughter and bonding.

As the saying goes – A woman is unstoppable when she realises she deserves better. Social Beat is happy and proud to be part of this initiative. You can also read our blog on women in leadership and how to retain talent in a start-up for more insights.