NUS Medicine’s first Women’s Leadership Programme to empower female academics
Published: 27 Feb 2024
Participants attended a two-day workshop retreat on leadership, as part of the Women’s Leadership Programme 2024 at Amara Sanctuary Resort Sentosa on 5 & 6 February.
The inaugural Women’s Leadership Programme 2024, or WLP, jointly organized by NUS Medicine’s Clinician Scientist Development Unit (CSDU) and Office for Equal Opportunities & Career Development (EOCD) was launched on Friday, 26 January 2024.
The Women’s Leadership programme is designed to provide in-depth training in leadership skills, personal reflection and goal-setting, and opportunities for networking and peer-mentoring to help individuals gain greater self-awareness, self-management and communication skills needed to deftly navigate career development in research and academic medicine.
This unique year-long programme offers a combination of various learning formats from 2-day modules, to half-day workshops and lunchtime talks and is designed to empower women through:
- Tapping into various skillsets, mindset and heart-sets focused on leadership development.
- Building of an ecosystem where it draws the wisdom within each leader to unleash and access their collective knowledge, capacities and energies
- Improving the way participants lead self, others and organization
- Fostering of partnership mindset, courage, resilience, and confidence
Participants are women clinicians and researchers from NUS Medicine and NUHS, comprising a mix of Assistant Professors on the tenure track, newly-minted Associate Professors, winners of the National Medical Research Council Transition Award and Clinician Scientist Award (Investigator category), ALCNS fellows, NUSMed Junior Academic Fellows and medical doctors doing their PhD.
At his opening address at the launch, Prof Chong Yap Seng, Dean of NUS Medicine commended the implementation of this initiative and expressed his wish for more of such programmes, “Even with policies such as the leave support grant, Women-in-Science Early Career Fellowship, cognitive bias training, mentoring support, and the inauguration of today’s WLP, some female colleagues will still struggle with difficulties and encounter barriers to their career progress. I want to assure all our female colleagues that the School is committed to look into, study and innovate ways to smoothen the pathway for you, and with you.”
All 25 participants participated in a two-day leadership workshop at the Amara Sanctuary Resort Sentosa on 5-6 February 2024. They formed groups of five participants per group, comprising of a good mix of seniors and juniors in each group, and this becomes a peer support group for their year-long journey together.
On the first day of the workshop, participants learned how to lead themselves by understanding the different types of leadership styles and traits that they embody, and various leadership personality and values. On the second day, they are taught how to lead others by learning about the various perspectives and observations around women in leadership, and how they can effectively communicate with their superiors and team members using the ‘TFNR’ communication model – Thoughts, Feelings, Needs and Requests. This training was conducted by partner trainers, ELF Coaching, and it included lots of group discussions, sharing sessions, time for reflections and bonding with other participants. A team-bonding event was also held on the second day to further strengthen the camaraderie of the women leaders.
From March to November this year, participants will continue to undergo a series of half-day workshops and lunchtime talks. Alongside the periods of extensive training, the programme also aims to create more opportunities for networking and peer mentorship to help participants bond and support one another in their journey of developing their research and academic medicine career.
