Leadership Development Programs
Developing women to lead with authority, influence and longevity
Women At Work By Design develops women leaders at the defining stages of their careers, from their first transition into leadership through to the complexity and responsibility of executive leadership.
Leadership Development
Burnout Prevention
Organisation Design
Corporate Restreats
Our Programs
Our programs build the practical capabilities all effective leaders require: setting direction, leading people, managing performance, developing talent, influencing decisions, navigating change and delivering sustainable results.
They also address the experiences that can shape women’s leadership differently, including how authority is perceived, whose voice is heard, how potential is recognised, access to sponsorship and opportunity, the accumulation of invisible and emotional labour, and the pressure to rely on overperformance as the pathway to credibility and progression.
This is not leadership development designed to “fix” women or teach them how to fit more successfully into an inherited model of leadership. It enables women to understand the organisational systems in which they lead, consciously develop their authentic leadership identity and build the capability to contribute, progress and remain in leadership across the changing seasons of their careers.
Start a Conversation
Addressing the Barriers of Women In Leadership
Our Leadership Programs are different because they develop the practical capabilities women need to lead while also addressing the distinct barriers that can prevent them from fully stepping into their leadership potential.
There is significant societal conditioning that women need to address in removing these inherited barriers. Emerging women leaders may be highly capable yet still navigate expectations around confidence, authority, ambition, likeability and readiness that influence how they are perceived and how they perceive themselves. They may hesitate to claim authority, withhold their voice, wait until they feel completely prepared, underestimate the importance of visibility and sponsorship, or rely on overwork and personal responsibility to prove their value.
The program makes these patterns visible and equips participants with the language, insight and practical tools to challenge their inherent leadership beliefs strengthen their leadership identity, use their voice, navigate organisational systems, build influence and lead sustainably.
Start a ConversationTwo Pathways. One Leadership Pipeline.
Emerging Women Leaders
For women making the transition into formal leadership or preparing for broader people, project and organisational responsibility.
Primary focus
Leadership identity, voice, people leadership, performance, team development, organisational navigation and sustainable career foundations.
Duration
10 modules, delivered in two day workshops over 10 months.
Executive Women Leaders
For senior and executive women leading significant organisational portfolios, functions, teams, transformation or enterprise outcomes.
Primary focus
Executive identity, strategic influence, power, culture, complexity, integrated leadership and executive longevity
Duration
Six modules, delivered in two day workshops over six months
Programs Aligned With Your Organisation
Both pathways can be tailored to align with your organisation’s:
- Leadership framework.
- Values and strategy.
- Talent and succession priorities.
- Employee value proposition for women.
- Organisational language and context.
- Psychosocial risk and leadership responsibilities.
- Existing mentoring, sponsorship and development initiatives.
Emerging Women Leaders Program: Building The Career Foundation
Women Leading by Design supports women in the early stages of leadership to move from capable individual contributors to confident, influential and sustainable leaders.
The transition into leadership requires more than the acquisition of new management skills. It involves a fundamental shift in identity from being personally responsible for producing high-quality work to creating the conditions in which a team can contribute, develop and perform.
Emerging women leaders can enter this transition carrying beliefs and behaviours that helped them become successful but may become limiting as their responsibilities increase. They may continue to prove their value through personal effort, wait until they feel completely ready before exercising authority, avoid difficult conversations, take on too much responsibility for others or assume that strong performance will naturally lead to visibility and opportunity. This transition is moving from personal performance to performance through teams.
Women Leading by Design™ combines practical people-leadership capability with a deeper understanding of women’s authentic leadership identity, voice, organisational influence, career agency and sustainable performance.
The program helps participants become clear about who they are as leaders, how they want others to experience their leadership and what they need to do differently as they progress.
Who the program is for?
The program is designed for women who are:
Moving into their first formal leadership role.
Leading a team, project, function or significant area of responsibility.
Preparing for a broader people-leadership position.
Recognised as emerging leadership talent.
Seeking to strengthen their confidence, influence and leadership capability.
Ready to take greater agency over their leadership and career development.
The 10-module leadership journey
Leadership Journey Program Introduction
What does it mean to be leader? Meet your mentor, meet the facilitators, program expectations
Voice Confidence and Authority
How do I speak with conviction, influence others remain present when challenged and establish authority?
Leading People
How do I create clarity, trust, accountability and connection?
Developing My Team
How do I identify capability, potential and development needs? My role as coach and mentor.
Inspired Performance
How do I inspire performance and manage non-performance?
Leading Change
How do I lead change in a volatile era?
From Capability to Leadership Identity
Who am I becoming as a leader?
Sustainable Leadership
How do I continue to perform and progress without chronic depletion through the seasons of my career?
Navigating Organisational Systems
How do I manage power, relationships, opportunity and complexity?
Program Conclusion
What do I stand for as a leader?
Explore the Full Program
A detailed program proposal, including module content, delivery structure, participant activities, workplace application and organisational outcomes, is available following an initial consultation. Each program is tailored to the organisation’s leadership priorities, participant cohort and business context.
Start a ConversationAdditional Program Information
The program is delivered over 10 months, allowing participants to apply their learning progressively within the workplace rather than treating leadership development as a one-off event.
The program can include:
- Ten facilitated leadership development modules.
- A workplace leadership challenge.
- Internal mentoring.
- Peer Leadership & Learning Circles.
- Between-module micro learning content.
- A Leadership Reflection and Action Guide customised to each module.
- Practical leadership tools and conversation frameworks.
- Individual coaching.
- A 90-day leadership application plan.
Managers and mentors are briefed on how to support participants, provide meaningful feedback and create the stretch, visibility and experience required for leadership development.
By the conclusion of the program, participants will be better equipped to:
- Make the transition from capable contributor to confident leader.
- Articulate their leadership identity and values.
- Exercise voice and authority more effectively.
- Lead people with clarity, trust and accountability.
- Delegate without taking responsibility back.
- Inspire performance by establishing the environment that supports high performance teams
- Address performance concerns earlier and more confidently.
- Coach and develop capability in others.
- Lead teams through change and uncertainty.
- Navigate organisational relationships and decision-making.
- Increase the visibility of their contribution and aspirations.
- Recognise beliefs that limit their leadership choices.
- Establish sustainable leadership practices early in their careers.
- Take greater agency over their progression and future opportunities.
The program supports organisations to build:
- A stronger pipeline of women prepared for broader leadership roles.
- Greater retention of emerging female talent.
- More confident and capable first-line and middle leaders.
- Stronger cross-functional relationships and networks.
- Increased visibility of women’s capability and potential.
- More intentional manager and mentor involvement in women’s development.
- Sustainable leadership habits before overwork becomes embedded as the expected pathway to advancement.
Women Leading by Design supports emerging women leaders to develop the identity, authority, people capability, organisational influence and sustainable leadership practices required to progress and lead effectively.
Executive Women Leadership Program: Leading with strategic influence, integrated authority and longevity
The Executive Women Leadership Program is designed for senior women carrying significant organisational, people and performance responsibility.
At executive level, leadership becomes increasingly complex. Leaders must make decisions with incomplete information, balance short- and long-term priorities, influence across organisational boundaries, shape culture, lead through uncertainty and maintain performance under sustained scrutiny and pressure.
For women, this responsibility can be accompanied by additional dynamics. Executive women may find their authority interpreted differently, their communication subjected to conflicting expectations, their contribution less visible than their delivery, or their capacity absorbed by relational, cultural and emotional responsibilities that are essential but not always recognised.
Some continue to rely on the patterns that enabled their progression such as exceptional preparation, personal effort, availability and over-responsibility even when those patterns are no longer sustainable at executive scale.
This program provides senior women with the space, frameworks and organisational insight to examine how they lead, how they use their authority and how they can continue contributing at a high level without losing the capacity, clarity and sense of self required for leadership longevity.
It is not a traditional executive skills course. It is a facilitated executive development experience connecting leadership identity, strategic influence, organisational systems, integrated leadership capability and sustainable performance.
Who the program is for?
The program is designed for women who are:
Members of an executive or senior leadership team.
Leading a major function, business unit, geography or organisational portfolio.
Preparing for their first enterprise-level executive role.
Carrying significant people, commercial or transformation responsibility.
Navigating increased visibility, complexity or organisational influence.
Seeking to strengthen their executive impact while sustaining their long-term leadership capacity.
The six-module executive journey
Executive Leadership Identity and Authority
Who am I at this level of leadership?
Voice Confidence and Authority
How do I shape decisions and organisational direction at the executive level ?
Leading People, Culture and Performance
What conditions am I creating for others?
Leading Through Complexity and Change
How do I lead when the path is not clear?
Integrated Leadership for the Future of Work
What leadership capacities does this era require?
Sustainable Executive Leadership and Career Longevity
How do I remain and rise without chronic depletion?
Explore the Full Program
A detailed program proposal, including module content, delivery structure, participant activities, workplace application and organisational outcomes, is available following an initial consultation. Each program is tailored to the organisation’s leadership priorities, participant cohort and business context.
Start a ConversationAdditional Program Information
The program is delivered over six two day workshops over six months to provide time for executive application, reflection and integration.
The program can include:
- Six facilitated executive modules.
- A confidential executive reflection process.
- Individual executive coaching.
- Peer Executive Leadership and Learning Circles.
- A live strategic or organisational challenge.
- Stakeholder and influence mapping.
- An Integrated Leadership Profile.
- Executive leadership reflection and action materials.
- Sponsor or CEO alignment where appropriate.
- A final executive leadership and career-longevity plan.
The preferred cohort is intentionally small to support trust, depth of conversation and meaningful engagement with real organisational challenges.
By the conclusion of the program, participants will be better equipped to:
- Lead from a clearer executive identity.
- Exercise authority without over-relying on personal effort.
- Communicate with greater strategic clarity and influence.
- Navigate power, relationships and competing interests.
- Shape culture through deliberate executive behaviour.
- Lead senior people and performance with accountability.
- Sponsor and develop talent more intentionally.
- Lead layered organisational change.
- Integrate a broader range of leadership capacities.
- Recognise and interrupt patterns of chronic overextension.
- Protect the judgement, presence and capacity required for long-term executive contribution.
- Make conscious decisions about their next season of leadership.
The Executive Women Leadership Program supports organisations to:
- Retain experienced and high-value senior women.
- Strengthen executive succession pipelines.
- Expand women’s enterprise-level influence.
- Increase the visibility of executive capability and potential.
- Develop more integrated and adaptive leadership.
- Strengthen sponsorship and talent development.
- Reduce reliance on personal endurance as a condition of executive success.
- Support leadership continuity through different life and career seasons.
- Create stronger alignment between leadership performance, psychosocial responsibility and career longevity.
The Executive Women Leadership Program supports senior women to lead with strategic authority, integrated capability and sustainable influence strengthening both executive performance and long-term leadership contribution.
Why Invest in Leadership Development Specifically Designed for Women?
Leadership capability does not develop in a neutral environment.
Women require the same core leadership capabilities as all leaders, but they may encounter different expectations and barriers in how their confidence, authority, ambition, potential and readiness are interpreted.
A women-specific program provides the opportunity to address these dynamics directly while building the practical capabilities required for leadership success.
It creates space for women to:
- Examine the beliefs and expectations shaping how they lead.
- Develop authority without feeling required to imitate an inherited leadership style.
- Understand how voice, visibility, sponsorship and opportunity affect progression.
- Recognise and interrupt patterns of overwork and over-responsibility.
- Build strong relationships with other women across the organisation.
- Develop practical strategies grounded in their actual organisational context.
- Strengthen their agency without placing full responsibility for systemic barriers on women themselves.
Women-specific development should not sit in isolation from the organisation. Managers, mentors, sponsors and executive leaders also play an essential role in ensuring women receive meaningful opportunity, feedback, visibility and support.
The most effective programs develop women while also increasing organisational awareness of the conditions that allow women to remain, contribute and rise.
Start a Conversation
Choose the Delivery Model That Fits Your Organisation
Organisations can choose the delivery model that best suits their internal capability, scale and long-term leadership development strategy.
Option One
Facilitated by the Women At Work By Design Leadership Development Team
The program is delivered directly by our experienced Leadership Development Team, providing participants with specialist facilitation, consistent program quality and a learning environment that supports open reflection and meaningful leadership development.
We work with the organisation to tailor the program to its leadership framework, values, business priorities and participant cohort while maintaining the integrity of the Women Leading by Design™ methodology.
This model is ideal for organisations seeking a fully supported program, access to external expertise and an independent space in which women can explore their leadership experiences and challenges.
Start a Conversation
Option two
Licensing and Internal Facilitator Development
For organisations seeking to deliver the program across multiple cohorts or locations, Women Leading by Design may be licensed for internal delivery under a separate commercial agreement.
The licensing and Train the Trainer pathway equips selected internal leadership development professionals to facilitate the program while maintaining its core methodology, standards and purpose.
Licensing does not transfer ownership of the program or its intellectual property. It provides the organisation with defined internal delivery rights for an agreed period, territory, number of facilitators and number of cohorts.
This model is ideal for organisations seeking to embed the program within their broader leadership development strategy and build sustainable internal delivery capability.
Start a Conversation
Explore a Leadership Pathway for your Organisation
When You Get in Touch, You Can Expect:
Guidance on the most appropriate leadership pathway
A detailed proposal following the initial consultation