Why We’re Not a Leadership Program and Why That Matters
By Tanya Andrews, Founder of Trellis Collective
When people think about women’s development in the workplace, their minds often jump straight to leadership programs. And for good reason: structured leadership development initiatives play a crucial role in addressing gender gaps at senior levels. But here’s the thing: leadership programs assume a level of confidence, skill, and self-belief that many early career women simply haven’t had the opportunity to build yet.
That’s where we come in.
The Missing Step Before Leadership
Leadership programs focus on equipping women with the skills to lead teams, drive strategy, and step into higher-level decision-making roles. But before we can talk about leadership, we need to talk about something much more foundational: confidence, self-advocacy, and the ability to navigate a workplace that wasn’t necessarily designed with early career women in mind.
Many leadership programs operate under the assumption that participants are already in mid- to senior-level positions, or at the very least, that they see themselves as future leaders. The reality? Many early career women don’t. Not yet. And that’s not because they lack ambition, it’s because they often lack the early experiences, reinforcement, and skill-building that make leadership feel like an attainable goal.
Building the Foundation for Leadership Readiness
What we do is stage-appropriate. We focus on the skills that allow women to fully participate, contribute, and ultimately position themselves as future leaders. Without these foundational experiences, leadership development can feel out of reach, or worse, irrelevant to those who haven’t yet built confidence in their own value and ability.
So, what exactly are these foundational skills?
- Confidence in their own ability: Learning how to navigate imposter syndrome, own their expertise, and contribute meaningfully to discussions.
- Self-advocacy: Understanding how to articulate their value, negotiate opportunities, and make their contributions visible.
- Professional resilience: Developing the skills to handle setbacks, workplace bias, and industry-specific challenges without feeling discouraged or derailed.
- Workplace navigation: Understanding the unspoken rules of career progression, from networking to building professional credibility.
These skills are being experienced differently at the early stages of a career because they are not yet informed by years of professional exposure. Without that experience to provide broader context, early career women require a different kind of learning environment, one that builds confidence and competency step by step, rather than assuming it already exists.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
The current generation of early career women is entering the workforce with high expectations around purpose, flexibility, and inclusion, but also with high levels of uncertainty. Add to that the complexity of navigating male-dominated environments, and it’s clear that support can’t wait until someone is already in a leadership role.
We need to catch them at the start, when they’re building their identity as professionals. This is when the mindset of “I don’t think I can do this” either gets quietly reinforced or powerfully rewritten.
And the rewriting starts with structured support. We’re not talking about mentorship alone (though that’s important), or one-off workshops. We’re talking about a dedicated space to build confidence, develop practical skills, ask questions without judgment, and start to see themselves as valuable contributors with real potential.
Leadership Can’t Be Forced, It Has to Be Desired
A key issue with pushing leadership development too early is that it assumes every woman is already on that path. But for many early career women, leadership isn’t just about skill-building, it’s about belief-building. If they don’t yet see themselves as leaders, throwing them into a leadership program isn’t going to change that.
What changes is progressive learning and experience. When early career women build confidence in their abilities, learn how to navigate the workplace, and gain positive reinforcement through real-world application, they reach a point where leadership isn’t just something they might consider, it’s something they actively want. They see their value, recognise their potential, and are ready to step up.
We’re Not a Leadership Program: We’re the Training Ground Before It
The work we do doesn’t replace leadership programs. It ensures that when early career women reach that stage, they’re actually ready for it, and that they see leadership as a real, achievable step in their career, not just something that exists for “other” women.
Because the pipeline doesn’t start at leadership. It starts much earlier, in those critical first years, when the difference between staying, thriving, and leading, or leaving altogether, is determined.
And that’s where we do our best work.
At Trellis Collective, we meet women where they are. We help them build the tools, confidence, language, and support systems they need to show up fully and see their worth. We focus on the career stage that gets the least support but has the biggest ripple effect when done right.
So no, we’re not a leadership program. We’re the part that comes before it. The crucial part that’s often missing.
And that’s exactly why it matters.