How Women Rise Leadership Program

In spring of 2019 I was invited to the Dubai Festival of Books, held in Festival City, a luxurious complex of hotels and stores situated on Dubai Creek. I was there to talk about How Women Rise, which had been published 10 months before. Because of promotional trips to Japan and India, I already had a sense of the book’s ability to speak to people in very different cultures, but the festival in Dubai upped this by a considerable notch. The authors and participants at this gathering took the city’s incredible global diversity to another level.

After one of my talks, I was invited for coffee by two polished, professional and very enthusiastic women who owned and ran the Ameliorate Group, a small training company. Melissa Schlimm is a German national and Simone Lawrence is Australian but both had lived in Dubai for many years and had worked all over the Gulf. They wanted to meet with me because their dream was to build a leadership program based on How Women Rise that they could market to organizations in the region.

The goal was to create a robust program aimed at helping women identify and address the internal barriers that could hold them back–– and help men understand these barriers so they could become more effective allies. The program would be aimed at global companies with a significant presence in the Gulf. Once successful, they would build out the program for other regions.

I was thrilled because I’d been trying to interest a number of training organizations in developing just this kind of program. I had seen the impact the work had on women and wanted to broaden its impact and its reach. But even though I was traveling about 40 weeks a year to deliver workshops based on How Women Rise to organizations of every kind, there is only one of me and the world is a very big place. Plus, doing half-day sessions and keynotes is very different

from delivering programs that take place over time and incorporate peer coaching circles that help people to build collaborative relationships and grow together.

Now here was a small but experienced team demonstrating an over-the-top passion for doing just that. I also saw that Simone and Melissa had a deep understanding of the habits described in How Women Rise and knew what kind of assessments and exercises could help women identify the best way to address them. I gave them a big thumbs up and they got started right away designing a robust program for organizations.

We prepared for a splashy launch in Dubai and other mideast locations in April 2020. I had my Emirates ticket and was excited to go. We had media support and a trip to Saudi Arabia was on the itinerary. I was dreaming of purchasing a gorgeous black silk abaya at Robinson’s big department store in Dubai for the trip to Riyadh– precisely the kind of irrelevant detail that sustains my excitement by making me feel ready to fully engage with a different culture.

Then of course the pandemic came racing at us.

Everything was cancelled, and I figured the whole project would just get put on hold. But Simone and Melissa–– ingenious and persistent–– are not easily discouraged. They decided to find a way to adapt the in-person programs they had worked so hard on for virtual delivery.

There was a lot to learn: for them and for me. I could happily go through life without hearing another word about Learning Management Systems. The pandemic brought other changes as well. Melissa moved to Switzerland then Simone went back to Australia. But they kept at it, grew their company remotely and are now in the process of signing up organizations from around the world for their How Women Rise Leadership Program. In January, we’ll do our virtual launch and I’ll be joining a kickoff event. I won’t be traveling to the Gulf, unfortunately. But this virtual world we’re in creates a lot of intimacy and response.

The timing for the program is ideal and is a boon as I transition to the next phase of my work. I am now immersed in writing another book, Rising Together, about what holds men and women back from bringing out one another’s’ best talents and the best ways to deal with the triggers that can undermine us. Since I’ll be creating workshops for Rising Together, I’ll be doing fewer How Women Rise programs over the next few years. Yet thanks to The Ameliorate Group, the insights and practices will continue to have global impact.

I’m so proud of how these two warm and lively women have stepped up in the face of big challenges. What a great example of not only how women rise, but how we rise together.

You can learn more here: https://hwr.theameliorategroup.com/

I’ll also be doing a LinkedIn Live on October 12 with Simone Lawrence. We always have a great time talking–– I hope you’ll join us.

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