On Friday, July 12th, WEST will host its first Women in Leadership Bootcamp in partnership with Nucleate! We are excited to welcome several speakers for this day-long event that will cover a variety of topics for our attendees. These include: understanding your leadership style, embodying confidence, and unlocking your team’s potential. This bootcamp will train the next generation of biotech leaders to communicate, delegate, innovate, inspire, and provide clear goals and direction to their teams more effectively.
Pallavi Srivastava, Founder & CEO of The Wellbeing Ways LLC and Author of the book ‘Relationship With The Self’ is one of the speakers at the Women in Leadership Bootcamp and will be speaking on “Embodying Confidence: Cultivating Presence & Authentic Connection” alongside her co-facilitator, Elizabeth McWhorter, CEO and Co-Founder, ThriveIEP. We asked Pallavi some questions about confidence and authenticity, and why she’s excited to host this workshop.
Pallavi raises the point that confidence is not a one size fits all phenomenon. She points out that there is a ton of content in the world on the topic of confidence that focuses on quick tips and tricks, without going deeper into understanding how it works for different people. This kind of approach is not helpful in building grounded confidence. She says, "True confidence comes from inside out. We need to focus on being our authentic selves to really build confidence from the ground up, inside out."
However, authenticity in the workplace can be a hard thing to navigate in today’s workplace culture. Women can find it even harder than men. “Sometimes women can hesitate to be their authentic selves at work because they believe (unconsciously) that they need to act like a man to succeed in the workplace. This could be because they see that behavior has precedence for success. However, that is not the only way." There is a lot of research that points to how authenticity makes people perform better at work, become better problem solvers, and have more meaning in life - both at work and at home. .
Pallavi adds, “I think the biggest challenge for women to embrace authenticity in the workplace is not knowing how to put authenticity into practice. There is a lot of talk about authenticity and why it's important and research on benefits but there are fewer effective resources on How to be your more authentic self in everyday life. How do you respond to situations at work (or in life) in an authentic way?” At Friday’s workshop, Pallavi and Elizabeth will share how attendees can apply these practices in the workplace.
Overall, Pallavi hopes that boot camp attendees will walk away with a “new lens on how to work towards being your most confident self. [Elizabeth and I] are excited to share with the attendees a deeper, more effective approach to embody confidence.”
In the meantime, Pallavi recommends the following resources for attendees to learn more about confidence and authenticity:
Join our Women in Leadership Bootcamp by registering now!