Lean in at Enterprise

Last year, I came across a post on our company Hub from a woman called Teresa Philips. She was instrumental in introducing her rental group and our US corporate office to the idea of Lean In circles.

“The point of these circles is to offer peer to peer mentoring and coaching. Resources are shared, advice given and goals set at each meeting for the women to challenge themselves and grow as managers and individuals.

“Teresa was then invited to an event at Sheryl Sandberg’s house, the COO of Facebook whose Lean In organisation invented Lean In circles.

It was really gratifying to see the growth in our female talent pool.

“I was very jealous.

“I decided then that I would approach Donna Miller, Leigh Lafaver Ayer and Jennifer Koontz to see what they thought about doing this in the UK. We set up a conference call and decided that we should take advantage of the rental meeting and host a networking event. When senior leaders in our business heard about what we were planning they asked for us to make it a European wide event.

“It was really gratifying to see the growth in our female talent pool. We had close to 60 women there including GMs, GRMs from Germany and France and of course lots of ARMs. It was really inspiring to see what we are achieving by developing and promoting our best talent which also just happen to be women.”