Empowering a Billion Women

Creative Director: Hailey Harmon
Art Director: Hailey Harmon
Copywriter: Hailey Harmon

Empowering a Billion Women (EBW) is a business education network built to Activate, Accelerate, and Ascend women in business through a community platform for thought-leaders and rising entrepreneurs.

📈 Forbes Business Council 👩🏼‍💼

Five Ways To Scale Your Business For The Modern Entrepreneur

Four Ways To Help Women Overcome Barriers To Scaling A Business

👻 Here are a few pieces of thought leadership I ghost-wrote 👻

Burnout: It happens to the best of us.

Last year, we saw a rise of women taking corporate leadership positions within their companies but we also saw a rise of those same women facing burnout.

I came across a report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn that mentioned women's representation and how it improved across most of the corporate pipeline in 2020. This is great! But in the report, it was also mentioned how burnout is a real threat to the progress and growth we continue to fight for towards growing and rebuilding our SHEconomy.

42% of the women that participated in the survey voiced that they were often or almost always burned out this year compared to their male counterparts who faced 35% of burnout within their population. Even more worrisome, one in three women have considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers. These numbers are alarming, and they start to unravel our success towards building a more sustainable global economy.

When the going gets tough, they say keep going, and I couldn’t agree more, but what are some of the ways to prevent the feeling of burnout? As a woman, who has worked her entire life, and has worn many different hats, I want to share how I overcome burnout in hopes of helping those who struggle with getting through the “tough”.

Build a Support System: Find those in your industry who can relate to the workload you carry and can help encourage you to stay inspired. These are people whom you know you can fall back on and look to for encouragement and wisdom.

Enjoy a “Reset Weekend”: One of my favorite things to do when I feel like I have been going too fast and on the verge of burnout is to escape for the weekend and do things I enjoy like walking my dogs, reading a new book or going for a swim. Sometimes a reset weekend can take place in my own backyard or at a hotel miles away from home.

Find a Passion Project: Do something for you that doesn't work. My passion project at the moment is writing my book, Be The One. Having the outlet to write my thoughts, past reflections, and experiences that will empower women across the globe is something that I am passionate about and allows me to have a project to work on that doesn’t feel like work.

I hope that you are able to find inspiration within my tips to avoid burnout. We, as women, need to stick together and empower each other through burnout. As a community, the impact we have on the world and the global economy is unmatched when it comes to rebuilding a sustainable future.

Burnout is a threat, let's support each other through it.

Give Empathy a Seat at the Table

When we think of empathy, we think of emotions and how emotions can make one weak when it comes to business and the workplace. What we fail to realize and communicate is that empathy does not make us weak but instead helps us creatively solve problems through hope and meaning. When we use empathy in our workplace we are making the world we live and work in a happier and healthier environment. Using our empathy, we are moving people to act and allowing each other insight to our differing perspectives.

Here are a few ways to create and encourage empathy in the workplace and your leadership:

Learn and develop a sincere interest in the needs, hopes, and dreams of other people. Your team and co workers are individuals who have goals and accomplishments they wish to achieve, what are some things that bring them passion? These passions fuel them. Create a conversation that shows you value them for who they are and allow yourself to develop a relationship deeper than surface level.
Show compassion when other people disclose a personal loss. We are going through a difficult time right now as a country. When you lead with empathy, understand that your team members are dynamic individuals who are shouldering personal problems while maintaining and balancing professional responsibilities. Keep your lines of communication open, offer support and encourage transparency to create an empathic environment everyone feels comfortable in.
Encourage genuine perspective-taking. It is important to remember that everyone comes to you and your business through different paths and walks of life. Place yourself in other’s shoes to gain their perspective and learn their understanding. This if applied correctly will lead to solving problems, managing conflicts, and driving innovation more efficiently.

Workplace empathy allows us to enhance our strategic relationships and performance. Developing our empathy creates the capacity to imagine ourselves in another's situation, and gifts us the ability to experience the emotions, ideas, and opinions of those we surround ourselves with. With everything going on in today’s world (Afghanistan, and those suffering with loss from covid-19) it’s important to lean into our empathic side and breed compassion into the core of our work. With that being said, I hope you find value in these tips and also find yourself using empathy to approach these difficult times.