Technical skills are not enough – Joanna Gaudoin
Joanna Gaudoin is our woman to follow this week.
When it comes to issues of empowerment, women and children are usually the first to come to one's mind. One rarely thinks of it being the other way round, a female empowering men and women.
Joanna Gaudoin, a Londoner in her mid-30s, founder and owner of Inside Out Image, challenges such notions as she specialises in assisting both male and female professionals: “get to what they want to be in their professional careers.”
As her company name suggests, she concentrates in an underestimated area of people's careers: how people present themselves to others and engage to build professional relationships.
“I focus on people’s personal impact, the perception they provoke when they walk into a room and how they engage others to build great professional relationships.”
Workshops giving voice
Power Women of City recently caught up with Gaudoin, at Voice At The Table, an open workshop where she was delivering tips to a group of women on how to navigate office politics which "if negative can be extremely destructive."
“Due to negative politics, people can end up in hospital because of stress and they will not be able to achieve their goals. Negative office politics are one of the biggest causes of stress in the UK,” she said.
Who is Joanna?
Joanna Gaudoin holds a Bachelor of Science – International Management and French, Management and French from the University of Bath. Previously, she has worked with various organisations such as Kimberly-Clark where she was in the Brand Marketing department from 2002-2005.
Between 2005 and 2011, she worked as a consultant with various organisations that include: Ninah Consulting (2005-2007), PMSI Consulting (2007 – 2009), Marketing Supply Chain (2009-2010) and Freedman International (2010 – 2011).
Her roles ranged from helping clients understand the result of their marketing efforts; optimise their marketing procurement ,as well as helping companies to market effectively
How she founded Inside Out Image However, Joanna felt she wasn't maximising her potential in these roles, nor enjoying them.
“When I was in consultancy, I found it theoretical and I wanted to do something that helps people get to what they want in their careers,” says Gaudoin.
With the help of a personal coach, she decided to start her own company: Inside Out Image in 2011, an organisation that focuses on helping professional individuals achieve greater career success and their organisations improve business performance, by working with them on their personal impact and relationship building skills.
“Skills and education are not enough. The impact you have on others, how you feel about yourself and how you build business relationships internally and externally have an enormous impact.”
People respond just like animals At the workshop, she outlined how people respond to one another as different animals politically. Some of these are more effective than others, depending on the situation. She outlined that at different points one may need to be a fox, an owl, a donkey or a sheep.
“A fox is brave, sly, and cunning; owl wise, observant, solitary, sheep naïve, while a donkey is slow, stubborn, hardworking, and unimaginative. “I can’t say one has to adopt the characteristics of one animal.
“Different circumstance call for different characteristics,” she says.
She also says these characteristics can also help women deal with such issues as gender pay gap and the glass ceiling.
“This means having skills in 4 key areas communication, influence, networking and Factor X,” concluded Joanna.