Skip to main content

A Woman In A Man's World: 3 strengths that female leaders bring to the workplace.





"When you look at the statistics around leadership, men are leading every single industry worldwide." -Dr. Shawn Andrews on The Emotionally Intelligent Recruiter.

Are you an aspiring female leader? According to Dr. Andrews, women comprise over 50% of the workforce, but less than 5% of Fortune500 company leaders are women.  This leadership gap is astounding, given the fact that women are also receiving college degrees at a higher rate than men. 

If you are an aspiring female leader, it's important to know your strengths.  Here are three things that you come to the table with:

  1. Emotional Intelligence.  According to Caroline Stokes, being the best requires emotional intelligence.  Emotional intelligence is about being able to read and identify emotions - something that comes naturally to women.  This is especially helpful when in a leadership position.  Your top talent will thank you.
  2. Problem solving.   According to Ron Carucci, founder and managing partner of Navalent, women are holistic problem solvers.  We consider more options, weight more variables, and consider contextual perspective when faced with an issue.  
  3. Communication.  Great leadership requires great communication skills, according to Frieda Klotz.  Women are naturally great verbal communicators.

The bottom line is: we need more female leadership in the workplace.  Are you a female leader?  How did you make it to the top?  What challenges have you faced?  I'd love to hear from you!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Miyanda Maimbo Kitawa on Facing Challenges (Wisdom from Africa’s Successful Women Entrepreneurs)

Although gender equality is on the rise in Africa, there are more potential challenges for women entrepreneurs than there are for men. However, it isn’t unusual for successful women in business to attribute their successes to the challenges that they’ve faced. In this post, I share the wisdom of Miyanda Maimbo Kitawa , who set up the first human resources company in Zambia at a time when HR businesses didn’t exist there. As you’ll see, her story contains many lessons for women who are facing the challenges of entrepreneurship, especially those who are just starting out. A tough start doesn’t mean you won’t succeed: When Miyanda Maimbo Katiwa drove to Zambia to start her human resources company, she had only a little money to split between her living expenses and what was needed to launch her venture. Having quit her job and been told by her boss that it was impossible for someone without prior experience to succeed in such a business, she knew she was taking a huge risk. “T...
2 comments
Read more

Align Your Brand With Others: A Tip for Women Entrepreneurs

“Aligning yourself with a similar type of business can be a powerful way to expand quickly,” writes Karen E. Spaeder at Entrepreneur . Alignment has long been a tried and tested marketing technique that can also build powerful relationships with others. When you align yourself with another brand or business, you say to both of your audiences, “What matters to one of us matters to both of us. Thus you can attract each other’s potential clients. Alignment doesn’t have to take place online. For example, if when you shop at your favorite clothes store, you receive a “percentage off” voucher from a different store, those two stores are being aligned. The implication is that if you like one store, you will also like the other. As famed marketing expert and bestselling author Seth Godin writes, “Alignment isn’t something you say. It’s something you do.” Here are two easy ways to align your brand with another brand: Choose a social cause to openly support: If there is a socia...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media in Africa for Women Entrepreneurs

Accessibility to social networks may be limited in Africa, but a reported nine percent of the population who do use social media often view it as important and empowering. Given that access to cell phones is widespread in the continent, use of social networks and messaging apps is increasing by the year among businesses, customers, schools, and students . In fact, the 2014 “Emerging Nations Embrace Internet, Mobile Technology” report from the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project (as quoted in ventureafrica.com ) reports that about 78 percent of Africa’s internet usage is for social media. No wonder female entrepreneurs doing business in Africa are using social networks to support each other. In the first of this series of posts for women entrepreneurs looking to use social media in Africa, we’ll review some of the main social networks, as well as how women entrepreneurs are using them.   Social Networks Popular in Africa Facebook long dominated social networking in A...
Post a Comment
Read more