In a moving and thought-provoking keynote session, Founder of The Chair Centre Group, Ibukun Awosika and a globally respected advocate for leadership and personal transformation, Ibukun Awosika has called on women to embrace self-reflection, intentionality, and truth as guiding principles for personal and professional success.
Speaking to a captivated audience of women professionals, entrepreneurs, and changemakers, Awosika urged attendees to routinely evaluate their lives, goals, and values with brutal honesty and deliberate action.
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“You have to invest time to evaluate,” she said. “Don’t take random decisions. Intentionality is key for a woman that wants to achieve the highest level of success in her life.”
Throughout her address, Awosika emphasized the importance of pausing to ask life’s fundamental questions not as a one-time ritual, but as a constant rhythm of growth and self-awareness. She led the audience through a guided reflection exercise built around timeless questions: How are you? Who are you? Where are you going?
“Whatever your life was like six months ago, you’re not necessarily at the same point,” Awosika noted. “One of the habits you must learn is to always re-evaluate where you are so that your decisions are on point.”
For Awosika, introspection isn’t merely a personal exercise, it’s a strategic life tool. Drawing from her decades of experience in business leadership and mentorship, she stressed that self-awareness and truth are necessary ingredients for sound judgment, especially in complex personal decisions such as career changes, marriage, or partnerships.
Using a relatable analogy, she said:
“If you meet a guy who likes you like crazy, and everything seems right but he says he wants a housewife, and you know that’s not what you want, then you already know there’s a problem. If you pretend you’re okay with it, you’re signing up for a battle later. That’s not his fault. That’s your responsibility.”
Awosika’s keynote took a vulnerable turn as she challenged the culture of masking struggles behind smiles and socially acceptable responses.
“Somehow, we’ve all learned how to act right, even when we’re not right. We have learned the appearances,” she said. “But if nobody knows where you need help, you’ll have the help around you, but you won’t get it.”
Reflecting on a transformative moment at Kellogg Business School in Chicago where she and other global executives discovered that many of their unrealized dreams could have been fulfilled by simply sharing them in the room, she underlined the critical need for open, truthful dialogue within safe communities.
“Every person is ten people away from your solution,” she said. “But it’s about you knowing how to make that connection work for you. If your network doesn’t know what you need, they can’t help you.”
Awosika urged women to stop playing to their weaknesses, and instead double down on their strengths while outsourcing or seeking help for their limitations.
“I don’t play to my weaknesses; I outsource them,” she said candidly. “You must know your strengths. And once you do, nobody can take them away from you.”
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As she closed her session, the former and the first female Chairperson of First Bank of Nigeria left the room with a sobering reminder of the consequences of neglecting self-evaluation and drifting through life without clarity.
“If you leave everything to accidents, you’ll end up with real accidents,” she warned. “Take charge of your decisions. Know why. Be strategic about how the dots connect.”
Above all, she returned to a principle that has been a cornerstone of her life and teachings: radical honesty with oneself.
“To thyself be true,” she repeated, anchoring the phrase as both a challenge and a compass for every woman in the room.
