Member Since November 2020
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About
LaKesha is the Owner and Lead Consultant with Womack Consulting Group. The firm provides Brand Management, Leadership Training, Strategic Planning, and Political Consulting to clients worldwide through seminars and one-on-one consultations with professionals, not for profit organizations, churches, colleges/universities, and businesses. She has served as a business development presenter for numerous Chambers of Commerce and professional groups and an Executive Coach for the Black Enterprise Entrepreneur Conference and the Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit. In addition to working with small business owners to start and grow their business, LaKesha specializes in working with newly formed teams, fractured teams, and boards of directors to teach leadership and professional development strategies to enhance communication, increase emotional intelligence, and improve organizational effectiveness. LaKesha has a bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and is a graduate of the Campaign School at Yale University. As a Forbes’ Coaches Council member, LaKesha contributed more than forty business tips to the Forbes.com Expert Panel forum. LaKesha is the published author of 16 books and has been featured in numerous publications and interviews providing financial literacy tips, business advice, and community engagement strategies. She hosts quarterly retreats for busy professionals to reset and refocus on their personal, professional, and leadership goals. LaKesha is also the founder of #RethinkingChurch Strategies, LLC, a social impact organization working with churches to increase engagement among their congregations and communities.
LaKesha Womack
Published content
expert panel
Creating a workplace environment where all employees feel able to communicate their needs is critical to retaining your team. Every business goes through busy and stressful times. While many organizations are able to navigate and overcome these hurdles, it can result in leaders experiencing burnout. This is especially true for mid-level leaders as they tend to direct many different moving parts and interact with individual team members. Fortunately, with the proactive support of the executive team, there are tactics that can be utilized to mitigate or prevent burnout and reinvigorate mid-level leaders. To help, 20 Newsweek Expert Forum members each share one way the executive team can help mid-level leaders get reenergized when they are feeling burned out.
expert panel
To make lasting, sustainable change, leaders have to be willing to throughly examine their existing culture and make needed changes. A business’s culture is its organizational backbone. As potential customers and employees have become increasingly interested in learning what a business is all about beyond its product or service offerings, culture can set an organization apart from its competitors on the market. Leaders, however, have to be mindful of the culture that is created and preserved. Maintaining the wrong kind of culture is an action that can devastate a brand long term, but the damage can be reduced if leaders seriously commit to making a change. To help, 13 Newsweek Expert Forum members each share one essential step leaders must take when they begin the work of cultural change.
expert panel
Doing a thorough examination of their own habits can help leaders see which behaviors are holding them back. Leaders play an essential role in organizations, helping to establish workplace culture and acting as examples for employees to model their behavior after. When leaders have good habits, it results in increased satisfaction, productivity and morale in employees. However, when leaders have bad habits, even when the intention isn’t to set a bad example, it limits and decreases the amount of success a leader and business can achieve. To help leaders identify which habits they should consider eliminating completely, 20 Newsweek Expert Forum members each share one seemingly harmless habit that can actually hinder leadership success.
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Committing to building a culture of unwavering customer centricity can effectively transform your business for the better. From Fortune 500 companies to startups, companies that prioritize customer centricity stand out in the market. They understand that customers are more than just revenue sources—they are the foundation of business survival and expansion. A customer-centric culture places the customer at the heart of every decision, fostering trust, loyalty and long-term relationships. But how can businesses truly embed this philosophy into their culture? Below, 20 Newsweek Expert Forum members explore the most effective strategies to cultivate a customer-centric culture within an organization and delve into the reasons why these approaches are vital for sustainable growth.
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By providing ongoing support, leadership can ensure that a manager has the tool and resources to succeed. Great managers are critical to the success of an organization. These managers sometimes step into the role already possessing innate traits and experiences that will help them succeed as leaders, but management as a skill should also be taught. If an organization builds systems to develop and shape the skills of their talent on an ongoing basis, leadership decreases the chances of creating and perpetuating bad management behaviors that negatively impact the culture and operations of the business. To help leaders ensure managers are performing at their best, 13 Newsweek Expert Forum members share specific actions they can take to increase the effectiveness of their managers.
expert panel
Adopting practices like mindfulness can be a great way to reduce stress and take back control of one's life. Between managing employees, monitoring the market and setting and achieving business goals, leaders have a lot of pressure on their shoulders. All of these responsibilities and expectations undoubtedly contribute to making stress a routine and ever-present part of the job for many leaders. While leadership and stress can go hand-in-hand, pursuing practices like mindfulness could help leaders better manage their stress and take back control. To help leaders prevent stress from negatively impacting their productivity and morale, 14 Newsweek Expert Forum members offer advice for how leaders can adopt or practice mindfulness on a regular basis.
Company details
Womack Consulting Group
Company bio
LaKesha Womack founded Womack Consulting Group in 2005. After speaking with a friend who was interning for a top-five consulting firm, she realized that many small business owners lacked access to consultants with the capacity to assist them with operating more efficiently. Using the skills that she attained while working as a Financial Adviser, Retail Store Manager, and Restaurant Trainer, LaKesha recognized that the products/services that each business offers differs, but all businesses require sound human resource policies, strong accounting practices, and documented policies and procedures to be successful. In the past fifteen years, Womack Consulting Group has worked with clients across the globe in various industries, including technology, publishing, retail, transportation, politics, and media. The firm listens to each client's needs to understand their objectives and creates a customized strategic plan to achieve their goals. Through regular strategy sessions, clients are held accountable for doing the work on their business while relying on the expertise of Womack Consulting Group to guide their decision-making.