Attend Sophie’s workshop to:
- Get practical skills for shaking off the feeling that you need to prove yourself, increasing your confidence and influencing with impact
- Have an increased awareness of the conditioning that prevents many women having the influence they were born to have
- Understand the hidden architecture of power and the ability to shift the dynamic in your favour
Connect with Sophie and read more about her, below
I spend my days influencing (mostly male) investors, running a company, and making sure I have an impact – even when the voice in my head (wired by years of being conditioned to be a good girl) tells me I don’t know what I’m doing and should sit down. Spoiler: I don’t (most of the time).
Being underestimated is nothing new. As an army kid, I moved every two years – seven schools in eight years – before being sent to board abroad with no safety net. Add in a speech impediment and bullying, and I had two choices: shrink or stand tall. I chose tall (most of the time).
My outlook has been shaped not just by my own battles with self-doubt, but by incredible people who defy the status quo – my best friend with muscular dystrophy, my LGBTQ+ friends, my autistic family members, and my husband, who fights mental ill health daily but keeps going. I’m often called confident, but those who know me understand how conscious an effort that takes – every single day.
I believe leadership development is the most critical function in business. Done well, it’s the path to strategic success. Done poorly, or not at all, it holds people and companies back. Yet its impact has been historically hard to measure, leaving those responsible for it underestimated. My business, Perspective, amplifies leadership development’s impact and quantifies its effectiveness, giving the people behind it the credit they deserve and improving the performance of leaders and their teams.
I can’t wait to be at the HR Big Meet. I spent my first decade as in-house HR but, since moving to the ‘dark-side’ and becoming a supplier, I’ve longed to find an accepting community – people who are not just experts and passionate about people, but who also call out the bland and ineffective, and who will accept that I’m here to contribute, not make a quick sale. I look forward to sharing the techniques I’ve worked hard to learn – the ones that tip the power balance in your favour and quiet the voices that try to hold you back.
