Cameroon / Gabon: Léocadie Ébakissé, the “global coach” who awakens the talents of leaders

Léocadie Ébakissé is a Cameroonian-Gabonese Global Executive Coach and moderator / speaker. But above all, a true lover of the human who is thirsty for challenges. Six years ago, she founded Talents Awake, a consulting agency in transformation strategies and influence development, with which she helps decision-makers and leaders in Africa and Europe to identify their talents, and gives them keys and concrete tools to achieve their dreams and ambitions.

 Today, Léocadie Ébakissé is one of the most respected figures in the field of executive coaching in Africa and Europe, and for several years now, she has also been a master of ceremonies at the largest pan-African and international events and meetings.

Born to a diplomat father and a midwife mother, and having grown up in many countries, the young Léocadie, fascinated by the profession of lawyer, dreamed of spending her life in the courts fighting for justice. But life decided otherwise. If she is not wearing the black gown today, she has nevertheless kept her passion and devotion for human beings.

Driven by her ambition to become a lawyer, she began studying law at the University of Paris X in Nanterre, but very quickly was disillusioned. “When I discovered the Civil Code and the Administrative Code, I was quickly disillusioned. It’s not at all what I had imagined,” she confided to Africa Women Experts. She then decided to study foreign languages, since she mastered three languages, French, English and Spanish. With a bachelor’s degree in hand, she immediately embarked on the professional world as a bilingual account manager for Mondial Assistance. An experience that served as a basis for her career.

Afterwards, she spent a rich career of nearly 10 years within a real estate press group, a family business where she held the position of Deputy Director of Customer Relations and learned the basics of team management and management of human resources. There, she developed her interest in human resources and decided to pursue a master’s degree in HR management. A training that will be the trigger of her entire career, she confides.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. After graduation, she was pushed out by the CEO of the company, while she was hoping for a HRD position. “When I graduated with my master’s degree in human resources, I imagined I was going to become HRD for the company. But I was told that I would not stay. I did not understand, because everything was going well, ”she says. But what she initially saw as a failure would ultimately turn out to be the opportunity of her entire career.

The human being at the heart of her career

She then moved on to consultancy, recruitment and career management firms and held the position of Business Development Manager in the Human Resources Department in a firm specialising in customer relations, where she discovered the particularities of different business sectors. In 2008, with the subprime crisis, her company had to downsize and she lost 7 consultants with whom she had worked: she had to run the training courses she had designed herself. Once again, the crisis became an opportunity: she joined a CAC40 company as HR Development Manager and managed a portfolio of 250 employees divided between the General Management, the Information System Management, the Communication Management, the digital department… “This great adventure allowed me to work with black belt teams. It was there that I discovered that what interested me was definitely the human, and how to build a strategy in which we integrate the employees and make them want to go all the way”, she explains.

Passionate about communication, languages and always looking for new challenges, she also obtained an executive coach certification in systemic management, was introduced to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), certified in the Hogan method based on reputation, trained as a professional speaker and became the first black woman to be awarded the title of Master of Ceremonies within the French Association of Professional Speakers (AFCP).

Talents Awake: awakening the innate talent of leaders

After these long years of experience in various companies in Europe, she decided in 2015 to embark on entrepreneurship to take on new challenges and be even more efficient. “I had a need for varied challenges. So, I told myself that I would become more efficient in contexts with project launches, creation, redesign, rather than day-to-day management,” she confides.

After accompanying several acquaintances as a coach for seminars abroad and assisting entrepreneurs, she realised that her particular talent was to identify and awaken those of leaders, to equip them and to design tools to enable them to be perfectly autonomous. This is how she created Talents Awake, a consulting firm in transformation strategies and influence development which specialises in the strategic and operational support of leaders and in the facilitation of international and pan-African events.

Through her firm, she works with executives and leaders in Africa and Europe, with projects that have a strong social and economic impact, and helps them to build relevant strategies that resemble them, so that they are comfortable in the way they want to express their ideas, she explains.

Through hard work, perseverance and resilience, in six years she has succeeded, despite various crises, including the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the difficult context, she has accompanied many leaders and managers on both continents, in different sectors of activity (mutual insurance, insurance, banking, technology), on the subjects of management strategies in times of crisis, the positioning of the leader, decision-making, or the ability to unite and motivate teams.

« Sky is the limit »

As a moderator and expert host, Léocadie has also moderated several international events, including the 4th edition of the TEG Campus, one of the continent’s largest events dedicated to Tech in Equatorial Guinea. She will also be moderating and speaking at the Tropics Business Summit in South Africa, dedicated to the promotion of multi-sector expertise in Africa, the Caribbean and the Antilles. Finally, part of her time is dedicated to coaching and inspiring young leaders: she is involved in coaching and mentoring programs in academic institutions.

Driven by her ambition, Léocadie Ébakissé has not finished dreaming and surpassing herself. Projects do not lack! After working during the lockdown period linked to the Covid-19 pandemic on the writing of her book, “The Energy of Ambition”, to be published in 2022, she will shortly launch her program called “Alter Ego”, a talk show dedicated to female leaders and male allies who are constantly (re) shaping the contours of new leadership, and a podcast, which will be launched by the end of the year.

For the next few years, the Cameroonian-Gabonese already knows what will be the common thread of her actions: the “4 HR”, which she defines as Human Resources, Histories and cultural Roots, Human Resources and Human Relations. All these objectives around a single and ultimate ambition: to support the leaders of a plural Africa with its different faces, potentials, cultures and ambitions.

Danielle Engolo