Coaching can take on many forms, it's a bond, a connection and it does not end with one-on-one training, as we imagine it to be. Depending on the project, company, team, or individual, any of these coaching approaches can be beneficial and the most effective leaders will use all of these ways to confidently take on leadership roles.

Our guests, Laura Bennett and Kellie Jenkins, founders of "Her Brilliance," are both accomplished leaders. These two bring out the best in women by providing a safe space for them to connect, form deeper bonds, and gain the confidence to transform their leadership. Her Brilliance sought to apply the same coaching competencies to a group environment, so they could gather a powerhouse of women and motivate them to step into their full leadership potential.

 
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Listen to the podcast here:

A Community for Women Leaders With Laura Bennett & Kellie Jenkins
Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Something we've talked about quite a bit on this program is coaching. When a lot of people think of coaching, they probably think of a one-on-one, an individual relationship where a coach listens to what you have to say, assigns you a bunch of exercises, and gives you advice on what to do next, or gives you questions, and hopefully, you'll come up with the answers. However, there are multiple approaches to coaching and I want to give every approach its fair due. 
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Today, our guests are Laura Bennett and Kellie Jenkins, who are the co-founders of Her Brilliance Community, a community of women leaders. Kellie, Laura, welcome to the program.

 

Thanks, Stephen, for having us.

 

Definitely. First, I always like to orient the audience. Tell us a little bit about Her Brilliance community, what your system is all about.

 

Sure. Kellie and I founded Her Brilliance a couple of years ago now. We are an organization-focus that uses a women-centered group coaching approach to accelerate the development of women leaders. We're all about helping women really access and tap into their authentic natural strength as a way to amplify their leadership impact and influence.

 

Yeah. I think I'll just add to that. The idea of community comes from this group coaching approach where it gives women an opportunity to learn in that peer-oriented community environment.

 

This group coaching approach, you describe it as a community. How does that manifest? I know a lot of people in America and probably a lot of other countries too are missing this idea of community after social media first ripped it apart and then the pandemic ripped it apart even further. What does this community look like? 

 

Yeah. It can look very different ways. Obviously, over the last couple of years, it's been mostly virtual, and has been just as effective as an in-person environment. You're really looking at a small intimate group of peers who have come together around some common theme or experience. It could be, they all belong to the same organization. It could be across industries. They're all at the same level and experiencing the same sorts of challenges. What we're doing is bringing that group together. Instead of learning through this one-on-one executive coaching, we're applying those coaching competencies into the group environment. It's not training where we've come in as experts and share our leadership knowledge.

 

It is really us bringing together a group of women to share their experiences and us facilitating exercises and dialogue to help them reflect on their own leadership and come up with their own answers.

What did the group sizes look like? You found a way to make it work virtually. Is there a certain size of the group or make-up of the group -- as you mentioned, shared experiences? Are they all from the same industry, or all in the same level of leadership, or something like that? 

 

Yeah.