Angela de Longchamps is the founder and CEO of Inspired Leadership. She is a corporate ex-pat, and Inspired Leadership solves some of the problems and frustrations she faced whilst sitting in the chair as a Human Resource Director.
Inspired Leadership provides an integrated and digitized leadership development journey that takes the best of all forms of learning and blends them. High touch and high tech. The channel partner model enables existing consultants, coaches and facilitators to leverage the design, the platform and the methodology with their clients, scale their impact and digitize their offering.
She built Inspired Leadership to help other consultants, like her, have a highly impactful, professional and digitized leadership development solution for their clients. She made a “business in a box”; a ready-to-use solution for people in the people business.
Angela loves the challenge to learn new things all the time. She has learnt so much since leaving the corporate world and the world of being an employee. She loves the empowerment, and that was something she had to re-learn. In the early days she would look around and wonder who was going to approve her decision to buy a printer, or purchase a license… and then she realised, that someone was her!
Challenges in business are constant and every day there are lessons to be learned. One lesson which challenges Angela is the everyday rejection. She has had to learn to distance herself from her business even though at times it is hard. This has helped her to retain her sense of self. It is her job to help potential clients know that what she has to offer exists. They won’t know if she doesn’t tell them. If they don’t want to know, at this time, she needs to move on.
Angela says “better leaders make better humans” and this is what has guided her through her career. She loves to read the personal change that has been created through what she has designed and taken to market. This helps her to feel 100% on purpose.
When asked about how South Africans can support small business, this is what Angela had to say “There is a lot of noise about small business and entrepreneurship but not a lot of businesses wanting to partner or take risks with or invest in small business. My business model is not bound by geography, so I am building partners anywhere in the world and trying to be a net exporter. Why must South Africa always import intellectual property? I want to export and retain the business management within South Africa.”
We hope Angela continues to inspire great leaders and help build an incredible nation through great leadership.
Inspired Leadership is a proud member of the NSBC