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Women in Leadership |
With the successful female entrepreneurs like
Rajashree Nambiar, Naina Lal, Manisha Lath Gupta, Chanda Kochar, Priyanka Aggarwal,..Etc. it’s evident that women are overcoming the obstacles and reaching heights than anticipated. The situations are getting improved when compared to the decades and the percentage of women in leadership roles are substantial increasing. But does that not mean that, all women are proving themselves?. There are women who still settle for less or give up in the middle of their career journey.
How can organizations develop an environment to
Empower women? Here are my views:
Revise the organization goals:
When the organization goals are scrutinized, it’s obvious that they focus only on the financial goals and customer satisfaction. On the other hand, an individual success are measured based on the individual deliverable. This needs to be revised. For a manager, the success factor has to be determined on how far they motivate their women sub-ordinates towards leadership goals. And for an individual, it should be determined based on how far they are preparing themselves for the leadership progression.
It’s a sad truth that men don’t prefer to work under a female boss. And the saddest truth, even women don’t prefer to work under a female boss. Female bosses are considered as dominant, vengeful and at times an assassination. Just because a person has had a bitter experience with a women leader, it’s not necessary that all the women will be the same way.
Organization should highlight the pros of having a female leader to both the genders and should train their women leaders to deal with employees. They should be taught that “Leadership position” is a highly influence position for others.
Organization can tie up with other organization and can appoint a mentor who would help and guide the women leader.
Re-define the definition of success:
Most of my friends believes that success of a woman is only when they have a good understanding life partner and kids. They are in fact tagged with the below formula.
Understanding Life partner + one caring daughter and one lovable son +financially well-settled = 100% success of a women.
Most of the women do not have a separate dimension for their professional life. A woman needs to be taught about the values of success in their career as well. They need to be trained and motivated towards leadership skills
Reasons for failure:
Every woman when born is so ambitious. Even when I joined the corporate, the corporate success journey of my Managing Director from an ordinary woman to an extraordinary leader was my inspiration. I aspired to become like her. But as the journey moved on, I tend to give up.
Women tend to give up their ambition easily due to the politics and criticism. Women are imposed to many myth from the childhood such as,
"Success in corporate means No personal life."
"High achieving women don’t respect their husband and family"
These myths make men to take a back seat in encouraging their women at home towards career ladder.
Also, we are tuned that Men are credible, focused and can handle situation and deadlines well when compared to women. Whereas women are too emotional and tend to give importance to family than career. Though these stereotypes are getting changed, men don’t acknowledge women and leadership traits that easily. The mindset of both male and female needs to be changed.
Finally, to all my dear sisters overs there,
don't settle for less. Try something new every day. Keep experiment yourself everyday!!!
Nature gifted women with the bliss of Motherhood not only to nurture and inspire their own children, but to inspire and nurture many people through the Leadership...
Be an inspiring woman that every men would look for...
Written for
#EveryWomanIsALeader campagin.
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