Leading to Change Community Event: Creating space for others – empowerment for wellbeing and development

This event is now in the past – click here to download the insights pack.

Empowering means enabling others to find time for their wellbeing and to develop and use their leadership potential.

As we embark on a new year, we often revisit our habits and ask ourselves what it is we want to do differently this year from a personal and professional perspective.  As we move from self-leadership to empowerment in our series, our first step is to revisit our intentions in interacting with others and how this affects our wellbeing and our leadership approach.

If empowerment involves action; actively enabling others to do the things that we are able to do, it is good to stop and consider what our underlying intentions are in the relationships we have at work.

Even if we don’t lead a team, we all have daily interactions with others and how we manage those will show our intentions and impact those relationships.  Those in leadership positions can play a large part in creating the culture within which empowerment can flourish and yet everyone has a part to play. With our contributors, we will explore creating space for ourselves and how they focus on empowering others to have time for wellbeing and development, and the benefits that brings for themselves, others, and their organisations.

We will hear reflections from the following contributors:

• Gillian Poskitt, Estates and Facilities – NHS Grampian

• Nadeeda Bakali, Young coach from Know You More’s youth programme

With a focus on storytelling and reflections, our contributors will share their experiences of empowerment and what this means to them in relation to creating space for wellbeing and development. Collectively, we’ll explore what this means for us, in our own workplaces and in our day-to-day roles using breakout groups.

Questions for us to consider:

• What does empowerment look like when we think about our wellbeing?
• If we have power (positional power or influence) and the capability to create and take space for our own development and wellbeing – what stops us? 
• Do we recognise the empowerment we have?  To what extent do our intentions influence this and our relationships as a result?
• How do we create spaces for ourselves as individuals and also help and support our peers, colleagues or those we lead to do the same?

Resources to consider:

If you would like to consider this topic in advance of the event, we recommend any one of these three, external, resources to read, watch or listen to. They are quite different and are offered as optional thought-provokers for those who like to get into the topic in advance. Click the title to find out more.

• Read – 5 mins – Creating space for conversations
• Watch – 5.26 mins – What is empowerment?
• Listen – 28 mins – Happiness at work