How to better support, retain and advance female talent

Many organisations want to attract, retain and advance female talent. Yet in practice, even in 2026, we still see that women are more likely to opt out, become less visible or be assessed differently from men. Almost never because of conscious exclusion, but often because of small patterns in the daily way people lead, assess, give feedback, run meetings and distribute opportunities.

This training helps leaders better understand what often holds women back in their careers and what they, as leaders, can concretely do to support women more effectively and more positively. Not by treating women differently because they are women, but by seeing more clearly where everyday working life does not always play out in the same way for men and women.

Practical information

Open training date: 27 October 2026

Duration: 6 hours, 10.00 – 17.00

Maximum number of participants: 8

Location: to be confirmed, Central Netherlands

Investment: Early bird until 1 August: €995 per participant. After 1 August: €1,295 per participant. The costs include preparation, materials, venue costs and lunch, and are exempt from VAT.

In-company training: This training can also be organised in-company at your location for a maximum of 10 participants.

Programme

Unconscious bias and its impact on women’s careers

We explore how the unconscious biases of both men and women influence women’s careers. For example, we look at assessment, promotion, feedback, visibility, work allocation and the evaluation of potential. Participants learn how to recognise their own assumptions and how to make decision-making around talent, development and promotion more concrete and objective.

Informal networks and unintentional exclusion

Every organisation has informal networks of people who find each other more easily, share more information, recommend each other more often and involve each other sooner in interesting opportunities. Participants learn how they, as leaders, can look more closely at who has access to information, influence and opportunities, and how they can better support women in this.

Leadership styles and what women need from leaders and organisations

We analyse the leadership styles of the participants and discuss how different styles affect women in teams. What leadership behaviour helps women work in a way that is visible, ambitious, safe and effective? Participants explore how they can practically integrate these insights into their daily way of leading.

Discussing personal circumstances without making assumptions

We look at which personal circumstances sometimes require proactive and careful action from a leader. This may include support around pregnancy, parenthood, informal caregiving, menopause symptoms, fertility treatments, health, workload, return after leave or the combination of high ambition and high pressure. We discuss the difference between caring assumptions and careful questions.

Proactively sponsoring women with direct and action-oriented feedback

We teach participants how they can proactively sponsor women in their careers. Sponsorship goes beyond coaching or advising. A sponsor uses their influence to make someone visible, recommend them, give them access to opportunities and actively help build the next career step. We discuss why women often receive a lot of feedback and advice, but less often receive active sponsorship.

Trainer: Esther Mollema

Target group & purpose

This training has been developed for female and male leaders who want to get better results from their team, make better use of female talent and prevent talented women from opting out, burning out or performing below their level.

After this training, participants will better understand how unconscious bias, informal group formation, leadership style, personal circumstances, feedback and sponsorship influence women’s careers. They will learn how, as leaders, they can support women more proactively, fairly and effectively in their development, visibility and career progression.

The training focuses on practical leadership behaviour. Participants do not only reflect on what can go wrong, but mainly practise what they can do differently tomorrow in conversations, team meetings, assessment moments and development processes.

Truly tailored

Together with our clients, we create tailored training programmes that support the learning goals of your team and/or organisation. Tailored really means tailored. We design and organise programmes that are 100% aligned with the wishes and objectives of our clients. We help you and your team or organisation gain insight and translate that into better results. We are happy to think along with you, design interventions and help you achieve the desired result.