☕ CoffeeChat Weekly
Opportunities & Insights from Across Our Community
Hi everyone, here’s what we have for you this week:
How do you deal with company decisions you initially disagree with? In this week’s episode of The Everyday Leader, Gabriel Gab-Umoden shares how he gained new perspectives during executive coaching sessions in his role as Group Marketing Head at The African Talent Company.
Our next panel discussion takes place this Wednesday. Join us to hear leaders from Cellulant, Shuttlers and ENL Group unpack how to set up new managers for success. RSVP here.
Read on for more details…
Being firm on outcomes and flexible on strategy, staying agile to grow quickly, and using coaching sessions to expand your perspective
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Gabriel:
Be firm on outcomes and flexible on strategy: Gabriel learned early on the importance of experimentation. In his early marketing days while at Konga, he and his team were tempted to follow the traditional playbooks of global e-commerce players like Amazon and Alibaba to launch their annual marketing campaign. Instead, because their team had a culture of innovation and experimentation, they explored a new approach that embraced a popular Nigerian song lyric at the time, with great success that blew past their sales goal. He has taken this learning with him as he has explored other sectors outside of e-commerce and as he has risen into higher-level leadership roles, where he has needed to focus on defining the big-picture goals while empowering his teams to find the best ways to execute to achieve them.
Stay agile to grow quickly: Gabriel identified agility has his superpower. Over the years, he has maintained an ability to quickly learn how to develop and apply new skills in the different companies and sectors he has worked him. He also moved from Nigeria to South Africa, which also required rapid adaptation.
Use executive coaching sessions to expand your perspective: The African Talent Company makes executive coaching available to its leadership team. Gabriel describes this benefit as being one of the most valuable, as it has expanded the way he views managing people and deliverables. The sessions have helped him better define and build a workplace culture and become a more empathetic leader. Gabriel shared a story of how a coaching session helped him navigate and ultimately embrace a company decision to which he was initially resistant.
Panel Discussion: Setting Up New Managers for Success
CoffeeChat's panel discussion series hosts Talent and Learning & Development leaders from companies and organizations across Africa. Each panel discusses and shares insights on important topics around leadership development and supporting managers.
The panel's topic is "Setting Up New Managers for Success" with a focus on these discussion questions:
What are common challenges that first-time managers face?
Which types of support do new managers receive at your company?
Our panel will feature leaders from across the continent:
Kevin Wakuze, Group Head of Learning & Development at Cellulant, based in Kenya
Ijeoma Anunibe, Head of People at Shuttlers, based in Nigeria
Lailesh Sidaya, Talent & HR Manager at ENL Group, based in Mauritius
CoffeeChat is a coaching platform trusted by top companies across Africa. From interns to CEOs, CoffeeChat helps democratize access to personalized coaching sessions with peers and professionals to accelerate their growth. Visit www.coffeechat.co to get started for yourself or your team.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions shared by each panelist are their own and not that of their respective companies.