Inside the First WELAP Session: Leadership Without a Template
The Women Enterprise Leadership & Acceleration Programme opened with a question nobody could answer cleanly: what does leadership look like when you have never seen it modelled?
We opened the inaugural WELAP session by asking twenty-four women to describe a leader they had worked under whom they wanted to emulate. Eleven could not name one.
The absence problem
Leadership development usually assumes a reference point — someone you are building toward. When that reference is missing, the programme has to supply it before it can build on it.
How we restructured
- Weeks one to three focus on exposure: sessions with women running structured enterprises.
- Weeks four to eight move to practice, with each participant leading a working group.
- The final block is mentorship pairing, extending six months past the programme.
"I did not need to be told I could lead. I needed to watch someone do it who looked like me."
Early signal
It is too soon for outcome data. What we can report is retention: twenty-three of twenty-four participants completed every session in the first block, which is higher than any programme we have run.
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