Drawing on her extensive experience as a coach with She Leads Africa’s High Growth Coaching Program, Hawa Kombian helps leaders to design intentionally, organise practically, and execute effectively for success.
In honour of International Women’s Day next month, Hawa shares a 3-step approach to building a personal strategy around social impact, as adapted from her Hey Founder series. Find out how you can tap into your unique capabilities to create change and inspire others.
Depending on who you talk to, 2022’s themes for recognising women include topics like:
- Gender equality for a better tomorrow (United Nations)
- #BreakTheBias on gender discrimination and stereotyping (International Women’s Day)
- Women providing healing, promoting hope (National Women’s History Alliance)
While this kind of flowery language is uplifting, it can be vague at best to apply these themes to daily life and the many imperative roles women own across family, workforce, community — not to mention as unique and passionate protagonists in their own lives.
What does pushing for gender equality look like when your race and ethnicity are also key to the alchemy of who you are? Which gender stereotypes can we push against to create collective change? How does the label of “healer” take us closer to or further away from our goals?
It’s a lot to unpack, no doubt. However, I ask you to take a deep breath (they say it can be healing, after all) and start small when determining how you (yes, you!) as one in 4 billion women globally or 700 million African women can guide us all closer to a change we can be proud of.
Let’s throw some intention and strategy behind this. However you map the pathway towards change, personal or professional, it all comes down to one thing — knowing yourself and what capabilities you can draw upon to make a meaningful contribution. Ask yourself, “What am I able to do?”
Capabilities are about how you add value through the activities you are able to do. These include your physical, mental, relational, and self-awareness skills.
By tapping into your unique capabilities, you’ll be able to discover how to strategically add value, recognise where you have growth potential, and find peace in what you can release to focus on the big(ger) picture. Learning how to harness this effectively allows you to enter what I call the #ZoneOfGenius. Here’s my 3-step guide to getting there:
Step #1: Get general to get creative
It can be incredibly helpful to think about your physical, mental, relational, and self-awareness skills in connection to:
- What areas are most relevant in your personal or professional context?
- Which of these areas are of particular interest to you based on your skillset?
Applying your strengths to general filters of relevance and passion will ensure that you can be focused with your time, energy, and impact. At the end of the day, the objective is for you to add value to projects and initiatives that light you up and ignite your passion for the work every time you participate.
Let’s take the example of Imani to explore this further. Imani works in a global media tech company, and is two years into her management role. She spends most of her time outside of work keeping in touch with her family and catching up on rest — but something is missing. Imani has set a goal for herself to spend 2 hours every weekend doing something that supports her local community. Following the prompts set out above as a guide, she generates some creative options.
Relevant areas:
- Imani knows that there is a large community of university students in her area, so Education is important to the people there.
- Seasonal malaria and cholera are constant issues that young children and the elderly battle in her community, so Health is an ongoing concern.
- Her home borders a Farming community that is struggling under the weight of providing enough fresh local food at affordable prices.
Interests/Skills:
- She was a teaching assistant in university and leads many internal communication initiatives at work on new skills and change management.
- Imani is grateful to have a compound that is split between a home and untouched land that is fertile for growing a few strong crops, and has been able to cultivate her own fresh fruits and vegetables for herself through gardening.
Clearly, Imani has some matched interests between the education need and teaching skill set, as well as the farming opportunity and gardening interest.
She then goes on to brainstorm some of her strengths in these areas, such as:
- Education/Teaching — good communicator, patient, good listener, knowledgeable about management and technology.
- Farming/Gardening — access to good soil, knowledgeable about plantain and pawpaw varieties.
At this point, Imani can take a step back and assess which option she would like to pursue.
Step #2: Do the 360 review
Remember, capabilities are about how you add value through the activities you are able to do. These include your physical, mental, relational, and self-awareness skills (in fact you’ll be exercising self-awareness during this exercise).
You can tap into a variety of sources and experiences to draw out your capabilities:
- Internal reflection > tap into your own awareness of life experiences and activities related to your themes. Based on your values, when were times that you behaved in support of your interests?
- External feedback > reminisce on times when you received direct and indirect feedback about your skills and abilities (performance review, anyone?). Be honest and highlight what feels true to you (positive and negative). It can be surprising and enlightening to learn how others perceive you, and you may uncover areas where you positively shine that you may have been undervaluing. This process may also highlight some growth areas for development.
- Crossover growth > where do you have transferable skills that you can move from your personal to your professional life and vice versa? Perhaps you have strong personal relationships from your ability to communicate and empathise — how could that be useful in a professional context?
Step #3: You do you
Now that your strengths are clear from multiple dimensions, what are you going to do with this newfound truth?
Returning to the example of Imani, after embarking on the 3-step process, she decided to start teaching an extra course on the weekends for university students to learn more about business management. While she has had to say no to requests from the local hospital to help organise their fundraisers, she’s getting help from her neighbours to start a community garden in her home.
Ahhh, it feels like a recipe for balanced impact :)
This Women’s Day, I would encourage each of us to connect with these global themes of equality by not just “being the change”, but asking ourselves what that looks like for us as individuals. Wherever you are in your journey, your context will certainly change. However, taking the time to cultivate your self-awareness, and from there, designing and progressing on your intentional roadmap for impact gives women and men everywhere hope and inspiration.
We are stronger when we can discern what is for us, and what is not for right now; what we can learn, and what we can give; what we can carry, and what we can share.
Summary
- Tap into self-awareness about your capabilities this International Women’s Day/month/year/lifetime.
- Connect your capabilities to what is relevant and of interest in your context.
- Pull strengths from multiple sources (self, others, growth).
- Do you — advocate for what you need so you can play to your strengths.
Hawa is a former She Leads Africa coach with the High Growth Coaching Program, and currently works as a Member Journeys Specialist at The ROOM.
This post was adapted from her “Hey Founder…” piece on capabilities from the 6-part series on “how to create a strategy”.
Connect with Hawa here and please fill in her quick survey to share your thoughts on leadership products & services of interest to you.
