This year, Redscope Consulting had the pleasure to co-organise inspirational lunchtime conferences on ‘’Building Inclusion & Gender Balance in Europe’’ together with the European School of Administration (EUSA). Facilitated by Claudia de Castro Caldeirinha, the series of Leadership Talks was designed not only as learning experience but also as a platform for interactive exchanges between inspiring guest speakers and senior EU managers.
The talks were framed around the European context and global mega-trends that are reshaping the environment and influencing priorities of decision makers, organisations, and teams. While core aspects of leadership – vision, direction, strategic acumen– remain in order, inclusive leadership is recognised as the new skill-set that is vital to the way leadership is executed in the 21st century.
These Talks have brought together a number of remarkable leaders – Pascale Van Damme (Vice President & Country Lead Managing Director Commercial Business Dell EMC Belgium & Luxembourg); Daniël de Clerck (General Manager of End-to-End Operations, Member of the Executive Committee BNP Paribas Fortis); Dirk Van Gerven (Managing partner of NautaDutilh); Pastora Valero (Vice President at CISCO Systems); Dirk Luyten (Managing Director, Levante Capital Management); Erwin Ollivier (General Manager, Athlon Belgium, JUMP Award Winner 2016); Louise Harvey (Non-Executive Chair, FTI Consulting).
These values-driven, courageous and emotionally intelligent leaders strategically prioritise bringing together various talents, i.e. a balanced ratio of women and men, of different origins and ages. At the Talks, they shared their experiences and the best practices from their respective fields, and discussed these with the EU managers. Some of the questions addressed by the speakers were: (i) What are the skills and qualities that leaders and managers need to develop -today and in the future – to effectively tackle these challenges?; (ii) How important it is to cultivate inclusive and gender balanced organisations and teams, in this context? Why?; (iii) How to create workplace inclusive working cultures that are discrimination-free, and are conducive to shared responsibility and fair access to power, both for men and women?; (iv) How to move from rhetoric and good intentions to real Change –what works?; (v) What are your top tips for leaders and managers who aim at being more inclusive and foster diversity in their organisations and teams?
Participants and speakers agreed that ‘Balanced Leadership’, ‘Gender Equality’, ‘Redefining Power’ are no longer things that are only right to be done, they are the things organizations and companies must achieve if they want to survive in the 21st century.
This process is a step in building a more inclusive EU and Redscope will continue to encourage more of these conversations & learning opportunities in the future. Stay in touch & get involved – ‘Together We Are Stronger!’