December 2020 - What would you do if you weren't afraid?

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

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What a year it has been! For me personally, I felt the year went by swiftly with no pauses in between.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad, but mostly the way life happened this year was beyond my expectations. In 2020, I learned about adaptability while stepping outside of my comfort zone, both personally and professionally.

All this was made possible thanks to my brothers and sisters from Lean In Malaysia. They are my support system to fall back on in this challenging time, and that’s exactly what I want to emphasise in this closing note for this year.

Lean In Malaysia leaders this year have played an amazing role as the community’s support system through our Masterclasses, workshops, accelerators and virtual dialogues with the aim to educate, enable and empower our participants from topics such as sexual harassment to working-from-home productivity to unconscious bias at the workplace.

Through these engagements, we noticed positive outcomes from folks being better informed about the topics and leaving with key takeaways especially on how to adapt in this new norm, particularly for women who now have to wear multiple hats around the clock in their own homes.

We truly believe in reaching out to those in need because you never know you need help until you are offered one.

This year, I went through a phase of a career transition and a phase of working from home alone for months while being away from family. I struggled with my own career identity and adjusting to the new life of working from home but I managed to pull through with the support from my family and my #leaninsisters.

With love,

Abir Abdul Rahim
Co-Founder & Director - Lean In Malaysia

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. And what a year of self-discovery it has been for all of us at Lean in Malaysia! Our personal and professional lives as we knew it a year ago has changed.

As we look back on 2020, what we can learn from this unprecedented year is that we have to adapt, transform and grow in adversity and challenge. 2020 would have seen more people working remotely, having more virtual events and meetings and we at Lean in Malaysia are not very different. The team at Lean in Malaysia have had to put on their creative hats to ensure that we are still able to reach out to all our members despite not being able to meet face-to-face.
And how we rose to the challenge with our Masterclasses, workshops, accelerators and virtual dialogues!

With 2020, there is now a renewed consensus that we need to strive to find the good in the bad, to keep our chins up in this new age and to soldier on even stronger than before. Adaptability - it makes you uncomfortable, but it helps you to grow to be the better version of yourself for today and for tomorrow.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of us.

We shall see you again in 2021!

With love,

Sharmila Ravindran
Board of Advisors (Legal) - Lean In Malaysia

Lean In Career Programme 5.0 Recharge & Reignite was a success!

2020 has been a tough year for everyone. Many people have had their livelihoods affected, whether it’s a loss of a job, or a lack of career progression in their current role.

We at Lean In Malaysia showed our support and lent our helping hand with our signature women-only career accelerator programme, back for its 5^th year. The programme was conducted virtually because of the pandemic.

The Lean In Career Programme 5.0 (LICP 5.0), held between 19^th November to 9^th December recently, aimed to reboot the career of the participants. It also geared them up for success and helped them put their best foot forward professionally.

Highlights of this year’s programme include:

‘Turning stress and anxiety into positive energy’ with Azran Osman-Rani (CEO of Naluri)
‘Grow in Leadership’ with Mollie Boyd (from Google’s Women Will)
‘CV Clinic and interview practice workshop’ with Sana Zahid (Senior HR Consultant, Robert Walters)
And many more!

Kamilia Khairul Anuar, who works as a regulatory associate at Maxis, was one of the participants. Here she shares her LICP 5.0 experience.

What were your 3 main takeaways from the programme?

"I learned to be intentional about what steps to take to progress and shape my career. I learned to leverage on connections and actively seek out opportunities for me to learn something new and I learned to remember to take a step back to take care of myself!"

Which sessions did you find most useful and why?

"The CV clinic session with Robert Walters was very useful for me - I learned a lot about how best to market my skills and achievements in my CV and the major do's and don'ts when it comes to crafting your CV. It was especially useful to hear their perspective as recruiters and the different hiring trends they observed in different industries like finance and law."

How was your experience of joining the programme virtually?

"In terms of convenience and accessibility it was definitely a plus - these sessions were all either during weekends or after work hours, so it was a lot easier just to turn on my laptop and log in!"

Unconscious Bias Panel with ada

We had the privilege of recently partnering with the leadership team of ada in a dialogue to tackle our unconscious biases and what we can do to tackle that.

ADA is a data and artificial intelligence company that designs and executes integrated digital, analytics, and marketing solutions.

We discovered that there are many unconscious biases that exist, such as gender, age, and even education. We had an interesting discussion on coming up with practical solutions to navigate the nuanced everyday realities of these biases: starting with openness, awareness and empathy.

Learn more here.

Do reach out to us if you are an individual trying to learn how to tackle a Bias issue; or if you represent your organisation in the pursuit of gender equality!