If you have never caught an episode of Under 40 CEOs since it hit the airwaves in October, 2015 then you really do need to make it a date to watch at 9pm (Nigerian Time), every Wednesday on SIlverbird Television Dream Network. You may also watch on DSTV Channel 252 at same time.

Ukinebo Dare is the CEO at Poise Graduate Finishing School and she was our guest last week Wednesday. Please do read excerpts from her interview below and be inspired.

Ukinebo Dare

As a student, I opted for sciences because my role model, mentor and everything is my Dad. My Dad is an engineer so I always wanted to study engineering. Early in life I had discovered what I wanted to do was to teach people. Even though i was working in IT, I wanted to go out of the sciences, and after working in the IT for 3 years and enjoying it, I just felt like I could do my masters in an IT related course which is what everybody expected or I could just use that opportunity to branch out totally and do management.
I worked for Oando, an indigenous oil company between 2007 – 2008 and when I went for my MSC in Management and got back to Nigeria, I was considering whether to go back to Oando or not. However, in my discussion with them, I indicated that I really was looking for somewhere outside IT. So, while we were discussing that and trying to find something in my new direction, the opportunity to start the Poise Graduate Finishing Academy (PGFA) came up. And that was in 2009, and it has been everything that is in line with all what i wanted to do. It has been about grooming and teaching people. The most important part was that it was new.
In relation to my twitter bio, obeying God was one of the things that inspired my coming to Poise. It all started when I was in the University, I attended a seminar by Myles Munroe where he talked about “Purpose” and how we are all designed for something and his formula for finding out what we are all designed for, is praying about it and figure out that thing that you really love and hate the most, and that shows you what you should be doing. I had gotten to that point where I followed the steps as he prescribed and I discovered that thing that would give me fulfillment is helping people to see the truth in terms of how things should be done, how can I make my life better? How can I change my situation? So, running the Poise Graduate Finishing Academy was in line with what I wanted to do. In training these graduates, we help them go from feeling helpless to feeling powerful. When Poise Graduate Finishing Academy started, it was a new thing and it was meant to run as a department within Poise, which was why I started as the Head of the Graduate Finishin Academy. As the years went by, the growth of the academy meant that it could actually stand on its own as a separate entity within the group. That was how the transition went from being the head of the department to pushing that department into its own entity and that was how I became the CEO.

Ukinebo In A Training Session.

As a trainer, writer, brand strategist, brand manager and business advisor, I am very passionate because my passion is to introduce people to the best version of themselves. I see people going through life and trying to be someone else. Even asides trying to be someone else, some are just okay with who they are, but they feel trapped with who they currently are. Early in life, my dad taught me something which says “your nurture and not your nature will determine your destiny in life”. I am all about push yourself; there is more within you that you can’t get to the end. That is why I say this is not the best version of me, because if tomorrow I find something else that I don’t know how to do, I will push myself to learn it if I need to. So by introducing people to the best version of them, the first thing I try to do is to help them believe in themselves and see that there is so much more.

At Poise Graduate Finishing Academy, the key thing for us is that we teach employability skills in a way that is totally in-depth. There are many employability skills programs out there, and one could do an employability skill for 2 weeks, 1 week, or a month. Our own program is 3 long months of coming to class 4 days a week and that is because, we don’t just want to teach you, we want you to become it. When you learn about problem solving, project management in the office or running events at work, you are not just going to learn it in class, you are going to have that event, invite people and execute it. So for us, at the end of the day we ensure, you don’t just have the head knowledge, we ensure all the skills is part of you. In addition to that, we teach our students business etiquette and everything related so they have an edge.

There are many unemployed people out there that we just want to keep doing more. Since Poise Graduate Finishing Academy started, we have trained over 14,000 graduates and they have been through various levels of the training. Sometimes we do free seminars, but for those who have gone through the PSENSE training will have an 87% of employment rate. Now, these people are working in different industries, some of them are even managers because we started poise about 6 years ago. I went for a meeting some days back, and when I got into the organization I met the HR manager who finished from the training and others who finished as well. These people are finishing and are getting employed, and for us we just believe that it is because employers know what they are looking for, and when they see it, they recognize it and if they recognize it, they will acquire it. An employer can see what they are looking for in the skills of a person, but if they don’t recognize it, it is because the person doesn’t know how to showcase himself; they might pass him or her on. In fighting unemployment, we drive our students to be the best, we have some who finished and became entrepreneurs and have also employed people.
For PGFA, graduates are my primary target, we usually work with 0- 2 years’ experience, some in their final year in school, or those who have finished from the university but haven’t gone for the National Youth Service. We also have people that just started a job and they feel like they are not really doing their best in the job. So 0-2 years’ work experience are the typical set of people we work with and sometimes organizations invite us to train their entry level employees to take them to that level. The PSENSE employability skills first started as a 6-month long course because we actually did some engagement sessions with employers and students and we were looking for the size of the gap. That is the gap between what employers want and what the graduates are leaving school with. The 6 months was very long, so actually made the program more intensive and reduced it to 3 months. The PSENSE training has 3 stages, the Basic is the first, which we believe are the core skills if you want to work in an organization, and that is good ICT skills. A lot of graduates have ICT skills, but their best is to post on Facebook. And with the way the educational system is, so many students pay people to write their project, and many can’t even use Microsoft word. From the PSENSE training, we teach them basic ICT skills, work ethics, professionalism, how to act in the office, telephone etiquette, interview skills and CV writing. The next stage is the PSENSE Professional and this is a little bit deeper. Here we teach them how to start running projects like they are at work. They run a charity project, they do something called sell a product, where they come together to run a business. And they actually have to run the business and make profit. While they are writing proposals, memo, letters, we are checking all those things. They learn things like business writing, creative thinking, innovations and all. The 3rd stage is the PSENSE Executive. This stage is the finishing of your personality profession. All through the learning skills, we do over 32 different soft skills like projects, classroom section, and then real life activities. One key thing in PSENSE is that, the students don’t just feel like they are sitting down in class and absorbing information, we get them to act. We cover soft skills in such a way that we put our students into a lot of pressure, so that when they go out there to work they can offer more skills than their colleagues.
In having the best business, the key advice to an employee or CEO is to know who you are. You need to know why you are there. The key thing we teach at poise is interpreting your personality in the best way. The major reason for the finishing academy is not just to train a lot people but to change what employability means in Nigeria. We had to do a lot of work in designing the PSENSE exams, the certification programs and to get it endorsed by NUC. When we were working on it, we believed that if we have something this comprehensive and we take it to NUC, they will be able to push it to universities, but they endorsed it and gave us letters to all the Vice Chancellors for us to push it to the Universities. The reason why PGF Academy exists is to re-engineer the nation’s work force for the average graduate to be employable. It drives us in everything we do; it helps us to keep going out every day to find different ways to achieve that aim.
As an editor in chief of the magazine, “The Young Executive Diary”, it covers everything about starting up a good career from a fun perspective and it is mainly to educate young people. Travelling and interacting with diverse cultures has helped to enrich myself, the program and has made me to always remember that we are not training graduates to work in Nigeria only but in any part of the world. One of the key challenges that I have faced is doing something that is not very common. Being able to have that extra resilience to help people buy into an idea and understand it. Another thing would be patience. Finally, I had to come up with different ways to keep reviving my passion and interest by seeing that we give the best every time. In pertaining to my business, my leadership style is relaxing, but sometimes i change in an instant.

As a leader i have failed, and failing as a leader started in my early business and I was very tough. Then, if a person doesn’t get the job right, I would snap quickly that why won’t you get it right. I had a situation where I started something well and along the line i just got bored. So I decided to start something else without actually putting all the structures to ensure the first business is doing well while I am on the second one. For now, the current business structure we have is Poise as a group, Poise School of Communication, The Finishing Academy and the Poise Graduate Finishing Academy. In PGFA we set up NGO, because we give a lot of scholarships. The NGO aspect is the new thing that just came and it has been going very well.

Mr FAB with Ukinebo Dare on the show

One of our core values is Integrity. In Poise, the first thing you learn is self-awareness and the key to that is integrity. The second thing is Innovation, we don’t believe in doing things because that is how it is done, we want to do things that are still necessary and will make the most impact. Finally, is Impact. I don’t believe in doing anything that doesn’t have an impact on someone. My biggest let-down in my career was when PGF started, we reached out to sponsors and all of them said no. One after the other, they didn’t want to sponsor the employability program. And you turn on your Television set and you see them sponsoring concerts. Over time I realized that there are people out there who actually want to support such program.

I love to eat beans. My style is free. My favorite brand to wear is Gucci. I don’t have a favorite car. I look up to the group CEO of Poise Nigeria, Mrs. Mavis Isibor; The CEO of Chevron PFA, and Mrs. Obafunke Alade. My favorite travel destination is Dubai. My greatest book of all time is “Start Small, Finish Big.” I am reading a book called “ Who Switched Off my Brain” by Dr. Caroline Leaf. What makes me happy is obeying God.