Cre­at­ing your own brand, de­vel­op­ing your full po­ten­tial and find­ing life's pur­pose were just some of the top­ics of dis­cus­sion at a re­cent one-day coach­ing and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment work­shop at­tend­ed by ten RBC Young Lead­ers. The ses­sion, host­ed by RBC Roy­al Bank, was part of the Young Lead­ers men­tor­ing pro­gramme and was or­gan­ised by the Bank's NextGen Em­ploy­ee Re­source Group.

The work­shop was one of a se­ries of events planned for the Ten Young Lead­ers who were se­lect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the bank's in­au­gur­al Young Lead­ers men­tor­ship pro­gramme. The stu­dents will ben­e­fit from ca­reer ad­vice and lead­er­ship train­ing from some of the bank's man­agers. Men­tors were care­ful­ly cho­sen from a dy­nam­ic group the bank refers to as NextGen–an Em­ploy­ee Re­source Group that en­ables RBC em­ploy­ees in their 20s and 30s to build con­nec­tions with their peers and lead­ers.

Sae­di Ma­habir, of St Stephen's Col­lege, said he gained use­ful ad­vice at the ses­sion–"...ad­vice I could not have re­ceived any­where else but from ex­pe­ri­enced and ac­com­plished pro­fes­sion­als. Af­ter learn­ing about cre­at­ing my own brand, prepar­ing for work, and re­ceiv­ing in­spi­ra­tion to pur­sue my goals, I have a clear­er mind­set of how I can be suc­cess­ful."

Stu­dents heard from Cather­ine Gor­don of the In­sti­tute of Fin­ish­ing El­e­ments, which fo­cus­es on im­age, eti­quette and pro­to­col train­ing, it is the on­ly fin­ish­ing school in the South­ern Caribbean. They al­so heard from Shane Ram, a life coach who is pi­o­neer­ing his own brand of lead­er­ship called Soul Cen­tred Lead­er­ship, he spoke on meth­ods for de­vel­op­ing po­ten­tial.

Shar­ing her life sto­ry with the stu­dents was RBC Olympian Shan­ntol Ince, a para ath­lete who has won gold at many in­ter­na­tion­al events and is prepar­ing for the Sum­mer Par­a­lympics in Brazil. Her ad­vice was to al­ways fo­cus on achiev­ing in spite of the odds and to nev­er give up.

The ten stu­dents were se­lect­ed as the 2015 Most Out­stand­ing Young Lead­ers nom­i­nees and rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try at the Free the Chil­dren's an­nu­al We Day cel­e­bra­tions in Cana­da last Oc­to­ber.

Rob John­ston, CEO, RBC Caribbean Bank­ing, speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of the men­tor­ship pro­gramme, said that over the years the bank has seen tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence of Young Lead­ers mak­ing a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion.