In the crisis, it is time to reinvent yourself

The Women's Initiative Foundation has launched a program of moocs to accompany the officers to face the Covid-19. She opens exceptionally, two sessions to our readers.

to Help contractor(s)and managers to cope, to find the keys to bounce back and seize new opportunities : Martine Liautaud, president and founder of the Women's Initiative Foundation (WIF), has dreamed up in a weekend, the program "Recovery", in response to the crisis that hits the world of business. Created ten years ago, with the support of sponsors such as Engie and BNP Paribas, the foundation WIF has the ambition to promote women in business. His trademark ? International programs and mentoring for women entrepreneurs and executives in leadership positions, as well as programs "executives" developed in cooperation with prestigious universities such as Berkeley or Stanford in the Usa, McGill in Canada and CentraleSupelec in France. All delivered - it comes to philanthropy - to the participants duly selected.

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It is with Julie Le Cardinal, director of the department of business Sciences at CentraleSupélec, that the program of Recovery has been developed : a series of video sessions of one-hour, interactive, animated by professors or experts of the highest caliber. The first four, in the week from 20 to 24 April, brought together between 200 and 250 participants each time. A success that has led the WIF to imagine two new sessions, exceptionally open to readers of all in All, on pre-registration (1).

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"responding to the health crisis, three main concerns felt emerging in the business," Martine Liautaud. The first concerns the market : how will it evolve, is that customers will come back ? The second door on the cash-will it be enough to hold it ? Finally, there is the concern of the employees, often far away by the part-time unemployment : are we gonna find them, and if yes in what state ?". Gold insists this entrepreneur - she founded twenty years ago his own bank business, Liautaud & Cie - beyond the concerns that must be mastered, it is also "the time to think about new markets, new models, to innovate, to reinvent itself".

From resistance to resilience

The program Recovery is intended to be a tool to aid reflection and action. "Our goal is to provide content that is of high quality, relayed by personalities of the academic level," continues Martine Liautaud. The central theme, it is the resistance to the crisis and the ability to leave. We evolve the program based on feedback from the participants. Each mooc is evaluated and the summary is passed to the next speaker who can tailor his remarks."

After you have approached the management in times of crisis (with the philosopher Cecilia Renouart and the director of the transformation of Sodiaal), stress management (with an engineer in the aeronautics industry), the ability to come out stronger from the crisis, with Yves Peccaud, a specialist in turnaround, and the method of principled negotiation-Harvard, two new sessions have therefore been added, may 6 and 7, which were facilitated by faculty from ESCP Business School : the one on the motivation of the teams, to better prepare for the déconfinement, the other on the transformation of the company in the face of the Covid-19.

leadership makes the difference

The special feature of this online program, compared to those usually proposed by the WIF is that it is open to both men and women. "This is an opportunity to get the men in the loop because we need them for advancing diversity," says Martine Liautaud. Since the launch of WIF, we have men among our mentors but our programs face-to-face are intended exclusively to women, because they are also intended to free speech and to build a network."

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This series of moocs has another virtue : remember that in times of major crisis, what makes the difference is leadership. "The true leader has a moral stature and authority in action, ensures Martine Liautaud. It is passed through the trials that have forged, it has demonstrated a capacity for resilience. And this does not refer to qualities feminine or masculine, it's just a story of life." There is no doubt that the shock of the coronavirus will help to reveal new leaders.

(1) Program Recovery of the Women's Initiative Foundation

- Motivation of the teams in Covid-19, Wednesday may 6, 2020, 17h-18h, registration here.

- business Transformation in Covid-19, Thursday, 7 may 2020, 17h-18h, registration here