Women in leadership programmes: what a good one covers and how to choose one

Most organisations say they want more women in their senior leadership. Far fewer can describe what they do, deliberately, to prepare women for it. The move into the executive committee and towards the board asks for strategic judgement, influence beyond one’s own function and a working relationship with governance, and these are rarely taught on the job. They are absorbed, unevenly, by whoever happens to be in the right meetings.

A women in leadership programme exists to close that gap. Its job is not to fix the participants, who are usually already accomplished, but to prepare them for the specific demands of senior roles and to make the organisation’s investment in its future leaders visible and intentional.

What a serious programme covers#

• The leadership role and why leaders fail — what changes at the top, how capable executives derail, and the self-awareness and mutual awareness a senior team depends on.
• Vision and strategy — building a credible vision and strategic plan, and judging whether the organisation is ready for what comes next.
• Influence and reputation — how a leader’s reputation is formed, how to shape it deliberately, and how influence works where authority does not reach.
• Stakeholders and the board — engaging investors, regulators, partners and directors, and treating governance as part of the job rather than an interruption to it.
• Top-team performance — leading peers through change and complex challenges, and reconciling the corporate centre with the operating businesses.
• Individual insight and coaching — an honest assessment of each participant’s strategic capabilities and stakeholder skills, with coaching on what to do about it.

The last element is what separates a programme from a course. Strategy and governance can be taught to a room; knowing how one particular executive is perceived by her board, her peers and her teams, and what she should change first, cannot. Diversity, in a well-designed programme, is treated as a source of strategic advantage for the organisation, not as a topic to be discussed once and set aside.

Where programmes go wrong#

• Generic confidence workshops. Content built on the assumption that senior women lack confidence misreads an audience that has usually reached its position by demonstrating judgement.
• No individual insight. A programme that delivers the same content to everyone leaves each participant to work out alone what applies to her.
• No board or governance content. Stopping at the management layer prepares participants for the role they already hold, not the one they are being considered for.
• No sponsor involvement. When the participant’s sponsor is absent from the design and the follow-through, the programme ends on the last day and nothing in the organisation changes.

A programme that treats senior women as a confidence problem misreads both the participants and the job they are being prepared for.

How to choose a programme#

1. What does each participant leave with that is specific to her — an individual assessment, a coaching conversation, a development plan?
2. Where in the programme are strategy, governance and the board covered, and at what level of seniority?
3. How is the sponsor or line executive involved before, during and after?
4. Is the programme delivered open, in-house, or both, and what does each format change?
5. Can it be delivered in the language the participants lead in?

An open programme puts an executive alongside peers from other organisations and sectors, which is often where the most candid conversations about the role happen. An in-house programme can be tied directly to the organisation’s own strategy and succession plans, with sponsors involved by design. For groups operating across the GCC, Africa and Asia, language matters too: a programme delivered in English and in French lets francophone and anglophone leaders work in the language they actually lead in.

What to do next#

Start with the role, not the programme: name the senior positions the organisation will need to fill and the women it would consider for them, then test any programme against what those executives need next. The BIZENIUS Women in Leadership Excellence Masterclass covers the elements above — the leadership role, vision and strategy, influence and reputation, stakeholders and the board, and top-team performance — with individual insight and coaching throughout, delivered in English and French, open and in-house.