Empowerment Minutes is a podcast for learning and development, leadership, and coaching professionals, hosted by Dr. Maurine Kwende. The podcast was launched in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to empower others—especially women—to find their voice and use it boldly. Each episode shares practical insights, tools, and nuggets of wisdom to help listeners grow, lead effectively, and make a greater impact in their work and organizations.
Dr. Maurine Kwende is the CEO and Founder of EMK Learning Solutions (https://emklearningsolutions.com), a consulting firm focused on leadership development, coaching, facilitation, and learning solutions. She is also the founder of Girls Can Dream Big 2 (https://girlscandreambig2.org), a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women and girls to dream big and live boldly.
Are You Developing People for the Work Ahead? with Dr Maurine Kwende
In this episode of the Empowerment Minutes Podcast, Dr. Maurine Kwende opens October's series, Developing People for What's Next: Building the Capabilities Organizations Need for 2027 and Beyond.
As organizations move into workforce planning for the year ahead, development plans often fall out of step with strategy. Dr. Kwende explains why strategy can't be separated from people, what capability really means, and why what looks like resistance is often a readiness gap. She also shares three questions to help leaders connect workforce planning and development to the work ahead.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why development should be part of strategy and workforce planning, not an afterthought
What capability means and how it differs from today's skill set
How to tell the difference between resistance and a readiness gap
Three questions for connecting development to your 2027 priorities
Ways to go deeper:
Join the newsletter for practical strategies between episodes
Pre-order Dr. Kwende's new book, Becoming the Dream Leader, launching October 20, and explore her other books
Learn more about the EMK Leadership Academy, home of the Emerging Leaders Cohort and the Senior Women Leaders Executive Circle, or book a discovery call to find the right fit
29 Sept 2026
Built to Lead: What This Season Is Shaping in You with Dr. Maurine Kwende
Episode Title: Built to Lead: What This Season Is Shaping in You
In this finale to Empowerment Minutes Podcast's September series, Leading Through Change in an Evolving Era, Dr. Maurine Kwende turns the lens inward, asking not what leaders should do during change, but what a difficult season may be developing in them.
Dr. Kwende reflects briefly on seasons in her own leadership that required decisions without certainty and steadiness she didn't yet feel, and invites listeners to examine what capacity, courage, or discernment their own recent season may have strengthened in them, without romanticizing the difficulty itself.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why growth in leadership often goes unnoticed while it's happening
How to honestly evaluate what a hard season has required of you, without minimizing its cost
The difference between simply enduring a difficult season and intentionally carrying its lessons forward
A reflective practice for identifying what to keep as things settle
This week's action step: Take fifteen minutes to write down honestly what this season has required of you that you hadn't yet developed, then decide what you want to intentionally carry forward.
Ways to go deeper:
Join the newsletter
Explore my books
Learn more about the EMK Leadership Academy (cohort programs, or schedule a discovery call to find your fit)
22 Sept 2026
Leading in the In-Between: The Messy Middle of Change with Dr. Maurine Kwende
In this episode, Dr. Maurine Kwende continues Empowerment Minutes Podcast's September series, Leading Through Change in an Evolving Era, focusing on the part of change most leadership conversations skip: the middle, where the old way is gone and the new way hasn't fully arrived.
Dr. Kwende shares a real scenario from the Senior Women Leaders Executive Circle, where a leader learned that steadying her team through a restructure meant clearly communicating what was known, unresolved, and worth focusing on now, rather than pretending to have certainty she didn't have.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why teams need leadership especially in the ambiguous middle of change, not just at the beginning and end
Why unaddressed uncertainty turns into speculation, and how that erodes trust
A practical three-part communication tool: what's known, what's unresolved, what to focus on now
Why protecting your own capacity matters while leading through ambiguity
This week's action step: Identify one area where your team is in the middle of a transition. Clarify what is known, what is still unresolved, and what the team should focus on right now, then communicate those three things clearly.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
4.0 / 5
3 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 41 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
62
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
51
Contact Empowerment Minutes
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Questions about Empowerment Minutes
Who hosts Empowerment Minutes?
Dr Maurine Kwende host the show. Published by Maurine Kwende.
How often do new episodes come out?
The show publishes daily, based on its RSS feed.
Does Empowerment Minutes take guests?
Yes. Guests have been identified in episode analyses.
Host of Empowerment Minutes?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
