I've led multiple resource groups in the past, and I will say having a group of dedicated volunteers to be part of your board/committee will be key. Brainstorm on topics/ideas that would resonate with your future members. Platforms we have hosted in the past were: small executive breakfasts, lunch and learns on a business topic or a leader's career path, leadership forums with a panel of leaders (internal and external), etc. Best of luck!

I love hearing requests for this! I just launched a Women in Leadership ERG at our company (as well as a structure for future ERGs) and it is an exciting time. I agree with some of the comments above - great tips! Have a monthly event, featuring you and the other female leader, as well as male leaders who are open to helping out, sharing tips in a lunch and learn or webinar series. I would survey the current employee pool to see what skills they would like to learn and then build out a plan, start sharing about it to create buzz and send out those calendar invites so people set aside the time for your event. You could also start a monthly mentor groups. You and the other female leader could each have a small group that meets once a month where you mentor them together as a group. Lastly, you could also set up a peer mentoring program. Sometimes employees feel more comfortable discussing growing pains or issues or ask questions amongst their own peers and those peers have different experiences where they can share new perspectives and everyone walks away feeling empowered!

This is a great idea! I have also worked at companies where a Women's Group was formed. What we did is identify several topics that may be of interest to other females (career development, handling difficult situations, executive presence, networking, etc. and think of some interesting activities around these topics. We started out small first with the topics. For the first meeting, we publicized the meeting and made sure it referenced that it was voluntary (as we didn't want anyone thinking they had to come). The first meeting was more of a meet and greet, where the intent of the club was announced, etc. In this 1st meeting, you can also survey the attendees with these thoughts around topics and activities they may want to engage in. They will likely have some really good thoughts as to what they would be interested in doing as well. We ended up having external speakers, lunch and learns, and happy hours.

My company started a women's group 5 years ago for the female employees. It was started by 3 of the female executives with the intent to network, empower and grow. They started out with quarterly activities based on interests/topics from surveys (career development, mentoring, job development, etc). Additionally, we had internal/external guest speakers, social activities (happy hour, luncheons, coffee breaks). The women's group now has regional groups in addition to global with extensive resources.

I think a once a month cadence will be good here too. The group is pretty small, so I think it will be easy to have the activities tailored to the audience. Thank you for the link. Will check out the book.

At one workplace I gave talks and held brownbags on topics of interest to women employees. I asked them what topics would interest them and did one a month. After a little while you'll have a sense of how big your core group might be and can tailor some activities to that group. I tried to avoid after-work events as I do not like pressuring non-work time any more than happens already. One that went really well is a brownbag on The No Asshole Rule and a discussion about handing difficult cases. https://amzn.to/3cvk620

I have one experience of nurturing a junior level woman. It was in a volunteer position for a non-profit. I found that, despite being exceptionally intelligent and attentive in learning the details, she did not always have the intuitive experience to wisely interpret what to do with the information and knowledge she had at her fingertips. I would suggest to nurture, yet to realize that young people have their strengths and weaknesses, and experience is one thing that will allow you to embrace your expertise and guidance as continuing to be valuable, even after basic employee tasking seems to be at a level of excellence.