Courses

Mikaela’s advice and anecdotes draw on original research, her own extensive experience and information from professionals across a wide range of industries. For maximum impact, Mikaela provides real-world, actionable tips to help attendees take immediate steps to apply her advice.

Branding

Did you know that more than 90% of recruiters are using social media to find job candidates? The importance of developing a stellar professional brand within an online and offline context cannot be underestimated. Clients often buy into people before they buy into the company and its offerings and so, it makes sense to brand and market your people.

Attendees will learn how to:

Make first impressions count and develop personal presence
Project the ideal professional image in person and online
Build their personal brands, communication skills and networking prowess
Developing a high performance, emotionally intelligent personal brand
Avoid common mistakes of personal branding and career advancement
Use online research to stand out in the job search process and develop networks through social media (learn to persist — without being a pest)
Avoid common social media mistakes
Build relationship capital whilst observing protocol
Develop a professionally appropriate professional brand, based on visibility, differentiation, consistency and authenticity
Build a personal toolkit of practices to build strong professional habits to apply to any job, internship or professional interaction
Delivering Compelling Presentations

Types of branding:

• Employer Branding
Establish the right strategy for attracting and retain top talent to your company by defining and promoting a compelling Employer Value Proposition aligned with your company values.
• Leadership Branding
Organisations that build branded leaders significantly outperform their competitors. Shaping focused and effective leaders aligned with company’s goals and values is a key component of building lasting value.
• Voice and Speech Branding
Create authentic and persuasive speeches by using effective structure, language, and voice to empower and differentiate yourself in every business presentation and interview.
• Social Branding
Use social networks to highlight your unique selling proposition and maintain exposure and relevance.
• Reputation Management
Understand how you or your company is seen online, define the right strategies to monitor, repair and prevent reputations issues. Position yourself as a specialist and go-to-person in your field.
• Team Branding
Create a unified team brand where all members communicate as one voice through leveraging the unique strengths of each individual to build strong and valuable teams.

Process:

Rediscover
By conducting a holistic brand assessment and uncovering key offerings, you will rediscover what attributes make your brand stand out from the rest.
Strategise
Discover the best tools to communicate, clarify and position your brand.
Practice
By applying several techniques, theory is brought into practice.
Present
Real-world, actionable tips help attendees take immediate steps to apply advice.
Evolve
Purposeful, conscious and consistent effort is needed to project a unified brand across all online platforms and in person interactions.

Multigenerational Workforce

For the first time ever five generations are sharing the workplace. Leverage your most powerful assets – your people with this innovative package. You will learn how organisations across a wide variety of industries are thriving with a multigenerational workforce. Mikaela teaches specific, actionable strategies to manage your cross-generational challenges and turn your multigenerational workforce into a competitive advantage.

Why is this crucial?

Many companies waited far too long to adapt to win Millennials as customers and employees. These companies thought Millennials would “grow out of it” or end up falling in line like previous generations. It didn’t happen. Understanding the upcoming Gen Z (or iGen) and integrating them into your workforce is crucial to your organisation’s day-to-day productivity and long-term strategic success.

Attendees will learn how to:

Explore the different generations: Traditionalists, Still-Booming Boomers, Xtra-Independent Gen Xers, Tech-or-Die Gen Ys, Gen Z or iGen
Expose myths on generations and learn to focus on people and not preconceived notions
Attract and retain attention from members of all ages
Discover potential points of generational conflict and tactics to handle them
Learn how to strengthen cross-generational communication
Uncover brand-new generational truths
Obtain specific strategies to leverage multigenerational opportunities
Foster and maintain networks within an ever changing connection-landscape

Process:

Renew your Vision
What if generational change is not a problem to overcome, but an opportunity to be optimized? Learn how to see the ever evolving landscape as an advantage for growth and not a threat.
Find your Why
Leaders with no sense of their personal ’why’ and without a strong awareness of their best self-identity tend to cause insecurity through inconsistent or uncertain actions. Mikaela helps you understand what effective leadership looks like for you and your multigenerational team.
Lead
Are you managing or leading your people? Mikaela explores how we can get people of all generations to not only obey instructions but be motivated to achieve team goals
Mind the gap
Many organisations are trying to balance a generation gap of more than 50 years between the oldest and youngest employees. Learn what this gap means and how to bridge it.
Rediscover
There is a tremendous amount of click-bait and misinformation that separates individual generations instead of bringing them together. Mikaela navigates the misconceptions and presents tailor-made activities that highlight and celebrate each generations’ strengths.

Feminist Fight Club – Combatting Subtle Sexism in the Workplace

True gender equality would increase the US GDP by 26%, imagine what it would do to the South African economy. The aim of this course is to prepare attendees for the battle that continues to wage on in workplaces all over the world. It is never quite blatant sexism, but long-ingrained attitudes do not evaporate in a generation. Recognising sexism is harder than it once was.

Today’s sexism is insidious, casual, politically correct, even friendly in a can’t-put-your-finger-on-it, hard-to-quantify kind of way. Consisting of two components: “Know thy enemy” and “Know thyself” this course is a must for men and women alike in navigating the integrated modern workplace.

Attendees will learn how to:
Know thy enemy

Identify subtle forms of sexism
Name and define the specific case so that women can look out for it and men can stop themselves from unknowing displaying subtle sexist behaviours
Identify key sexist behaviours in the form of: the Manterrupter; the Bropropriator; the Stenogrof*r; the Mansplainer; the Himitator; the Slacklusters; the Menstruhater and the Undermineher.
Learn techniques on how to best deal with these “enemies” and easily navigate the situation

Know thyself

Learn how women often self-sabotage in the “ring”
Identify common ways that women downplay their skills
Define self-limiting roles that women take on such as the Office Mom; the Doormat; the Credit Defaulter; the Queen Bee; the Instigate-her and the Herfectionist
Learn how women often bring each other down and how to address this type of situation should it arise.

One Shot – The Construct of Authenticity

Mikaela’s in-depth academic research on performances of authenticity online has lead her to discover ground-breaking truths about the use of social media in constructing identities.This interactive course is crucial for especially younger audiences in understanding the powers and pitfalls of building online identities.

Attendees will learn how to:

Regain a sense of perspective in terms of the online and offline space
Navigate the various pitfalls of social media
Rediscover your authentic self
Identify and manage problematic online social media behaviour
Understand cyber-bullying and the best processes to address it
Project the ideal professional image in person and online
Avoid common social media mistakes and understand how the online affects our in person interactions
Develop a professional brand, based on visibility, differentiation, consistency and authenticity

Process: