WHT London Day

To mark the end of our first term at Oxford, 33 WHT scholars took a break from the lectures and libraries in Oxford and headed to London for the day. WHT’s London Business day gave us a break from our academic lives and encouraged us to reflect on the people we are and the leaders we want to be. The theme of the day was Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Networking.

Once we had made it to the French Institute and hung up our coats, we were reminded to ignore our usual instincts of pulling out our laptops or notebooks and instead give our full attention to the workshop ahead and engage with one another.

The first session for the day was the Team Dynamics Workshop led by Jourdan Hussein, an Executive Coach for Series A+ CXOs and a former WHT scholar. Unlike most leadership workshops that focus on top-down approaches to leadership, this workshop focused on creating conscious leaders. The concept of conscious leadership is based on the idea that in order to become a good leader, one must be able to know and lead themselves before leading others. In this session, we learned how to recognize our emotions and triggers, and use this self-awareness to inform our social awareness when leading a team and interacting with others. Therefore, the key to good leadership lies in not only knowing your product but also knowing people.

After a short tea and coffee break, we settled into the second workshop of the day - a Networking workshop led by Alice Armstrong Scale, a Personal Development Coach at AGL Communications. The workshop focused on de-stigmatizing the concept of networking as a daunting, repetitive but necessary process for building professional networks and re-framed networking as a process that allows people to communicate their values, passions, and strengths and build professional relationships with like-minded individuals.

Scholars ended the workshop with a practice session where we practised the 3 C’s of networking: Confidence, Curiosity, and Connection. To wrap up our eventful day in London, WHT scholars headed over to the Cross Keys Pub for a Festive Drinks party co-hosted by Rasha Saïd Khawja, the founder and CEO of the Toucan Project. Over the next few hours, we connected with leaders from various organizations, WHT alumni, and WHT board members while breaking in the Christmas holidays and building professional relationships.