Leadership
Lessons in Leadership By Alison Kirkland
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n September of this year, I took on a new role as the CEO of the Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC). Established in 2011 by the CEOs of organizations that support women entrepreneurs, WEOC is dedicated to the success of women business owners across the country. Until this year, it had been run on a volunteer basis by the inspired women who form the board. In April 2019, funding from the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy enabled the board to formalize the organization with the establishment of a national office. Assuming the role of CEO and establishing a fully staffed national office has been a big undertaking and there have been plenty of moments of self-doubt; of wondering what I had let myself in for by leaving a very comfortable position to take on something so new and as unformed as an entrepreneurial start up. As I searched for inspiration to write this article, I naturally went to the internet and Googled ‘leadership’. There were countless links ranging from key characteristics of successful leaders and things that successful leaders do every day, to quotes about leadership and research papers that explored leadership in-depth. Simply defined, leadership is the ability to motivate a group to act in order to achieve a common goal. What I’m learning is there is nothing simple about leadership. I have been very inspired by the women entrepreneurs I have met over the past 17 years. There have been retailers, service providers and makers of countless products who have taken a nugget of an idea and transformed it into a viable, successful business. Would they think of themselves as leaders? Likely not. In their humility, the makers wouldn’t even say they were manufacturing because that would seem like self-aggrandizement. Many would simply say they saw an opportunity in the marketplace and capitalized on it. According to author and leadership expert Leroy Eimes, “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see and who sees before others see.” Over the summer of 2019, I spent Thursday evenings with a group of amazing women, each of whom was exploring leadership in her own context. Under the guidance of Jennifer Kozyniak, founder of Step-In Counselling and Consulting and based on the work of Brené Brown whose research focuses on authentic leadership, we pushed ourselves to embrace our discomfort with leadership in our personal and professional lives. It was a subtle yet powerful process as we peeled back layers to examine our own biases and preconceived ideas. It has been three months since our last session and I am still thinking about the insight we gained.
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Prairie Manufacturer Magazine • Winter 2019