Athena for executive women

Who is it for?

We welcome applicants from all areas of the public sector such as NHS, social services, police force and prison services, education, housing services and the civil service, as well as encouraging applications from the voluntary and community sector.

Benefits of this leadership development programme

The Athena programme focuses on personal development, and it also has an important wider purpose – to enhance the leadership capacity of organisations.

The benefits to participants and their organisation include:

• improved performance
• increased confidence and personal authority/presence
• a greater awareness of your personal impact and effectiveness
• increased emotional and political literacy
• a greater range of creative responses to challenging situations
• increased leadership competence linked to corporate goals
• increased confidence as a woman leader

What will you do on this programme?

Athena has been newly designed to meet the challenges faced by today’s women leaders. It is delivered in four modules over a period of 4-6 months. Participants will also be expected to participate in three learning sets (one day each) and two one-to-one coaching sessions (90 minutes each), which will be scheduled between the modules.

On Athena learning is through participation – participants need to be willing to be open and active in group settings and to take risks. New insights emerge through drawing on personal experience and hearing the experience of others. Decisions about content and method are balanced with participants' ability to generate knowledge and to be creative.

We aim to build an effective learning community that supports people to challenge themselves and others. All participants are jointly responsible for supporting each other's learning and sharing the rich resources of experience, skills and understanding they bring to the programme.

Participants are expected to negotiate full attendance of all aspects with their organisations.