By M.S Rao, Phd
“Can you imagine what the world would be like if women who constitute almost half of the global population had access to education and opportunities and were allowed to contribute their best? We would achieve prosperity globally in all spheres.” ―Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D., #HeForShe
Globally there are a few women who occupied the position of CEOs while most women culminated their careers in middle-level management. Very few women reach the senior level of management. Does it indicate that women lack the ambition to excel as CEOs? Is there any glass ceiling that prevents women from reaching the top positions? Are there any hidden reasons? Let us explore it from multiple perspectives to address this global challenge.
Strengths of Women
There are several myths about women. For instance, women cannot perform certain roles in military organizations. The truth is that they have the fire like men and the ambition to excel on par with men. They stand up for what they believe in and work with flexibility and adaptability. Women are usually collaborative while men are competitive by nature. Collaboration is essential for the smooth functioning of organizations and equally essential is a competitive spirit without which organizations cannot succeed. Blending both collaboration and competition is essential to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness. Here are some strengths of women: Biologically women have a huge potential and are compassionate by nature. They empathize with others and are sensitive to others’ feelings. They are experts in interpersonal skills and soft skills. They can handle stress better than men. By nature, men are aggressive. However, women are soft and well-behaved. Women are also experts in hidden data of communication. That is why they know the knack for understanding male egos, emotions, and feelings better and acting accordingly. Women are leaders at home. They lead their spouses and children effectively. They are more responsible toward work.
Women have tenacity, patience, and perseverance. They can multitask. They can bounce back from failures with tenacity and resilience. However, they must unlock their potential by breaking the boundaries. They must raise their bar. They must avoid looking for approval and validation. They must be prepared to fail and learn lessons from them. Above all, they must be proud of being women.
Are Women Better Leaders than Men?
Women have several strengths to their credit and the major six aspects include taking initiative; practicing self-development; displaying high integrity and honesty; driving for results; developing others; and inspiring and motivating others. However, women have more challenges than men as they must manage their families, take care of children, and do other household chores. Additionally, they encounter organizational politics, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Women are leaders because it is a well-admitted fact that behind the success of every man there is a woman. Historically, most women led behind the scenes by guiding men. Businesses can also improve if they encourage women to lead because they can bring lots of value to the table.
There is a strong perception that men are promoted due to potential while women are promoted due to performance. It is basically because leadership is synonymous with men, not women. Hence, there must be a shift in the attitude and perception of the people toward leadership and women. Both men and women leaders are two sides of the same coin and the coin is incomplete without anyone. Hence, leadership is incomplete without the active participation of women leaders. Global Inc must spot, support, and groom women to keep them in the leadership pipeline to improve organizational bottom lines.
Essential Qualities in Women CEOs
The CEO of the company must be an all-rounder. She must be a jack of all trades and a master of management. She must know the length and breadth of everything and the depth of the core domain. It is usually possible for executives who are from the technical domain. The CEO must be a troubleshooter, crisis manager, communicator, strategist, and visionary. The CEO must change as per the situation and act decisively. She must apply different strokes to different people in different situations which may not be possible for ordinary leaders. If required, the CEO must dance to the tunes of the stakeholders to get the tasks executed successfully.
Although women are more emotional than men, they know how to make decisions in a stressful environment. To be successful CEOs, women must have high energy, grit, ego strength, and the ability to bounce back from failures with tenacity and resilience. Here are some more qualities that are essential to stepping into the shoes of CEOs―strategic vision, continuous learning, adaptability, engaging employees, managing VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), building connections, and balancing stakeholders to name a few. Succinctly, to become a CEO, the woman leader must acquire technical and business acumen; hard and soft skills; and apply hard and soft power as per the situation.
Tools and Techniques for Women Leaders to Excel as CEOs
Women leaders must shed their inhibitions and declare their ambition to become CEOs to get noticed in the long run. They must aim high and learn the functions of other departments to widen their knowledge base and understand the whole picture of the organization. It broadens their conceptual skills to grow as CEOs. They must build their CEO brand consistently. They must follow the concept of job rotation to excel as well-rounded professionals to become CEOs. They must possess strategic vision and knowledge. They must integrate various verticals and departments within their mind to see the big picture. They must think out of the box to grow as CEOs because becoming a CEO involves leading people and troubleshooting. CEOs must think laterally and look strategically. Hence, women leaders must think laterally and act strategically to become CEOs. Since CEOs deal with various stakeholders including government agencies, financial institutions, marketing, suppliers, and clients; women leaders must set their vision in the early stage of their careers and develop the CEO mindset by learning various aspects. Here are some tools and techniques for women leaders to reach the CEO position quickly:
- Develop a CEO Mindset: It is rightly said that a battle is won twice―first in your mind and second in reality. You must think like a CEO first to become a CEO. Find out what is essential to become a CEO and start acquiring the knowledge, skills, and abilities to excel as a CEO.
- Follow the Road Less Travelled: When you look at Steve Jobs, he followed the road less traveled and excelled as an innovation legend. Hence, don’t get into the rat race. Explore the unexplored areas where you find huge potential and better opportunities, and work on them. Become a smart worker rather than a hard worker.
- Write Your Failure Resume: It sounds strange, right? You learn more from your failures than from others as failures teach you several hard lessons and enlighten you to analyze what did not work for you. A failed resume helps you find your blind spots. Hence, follow the three-step process while writing your failed resume. In the first column, list out your failures; in the second column, write down why you have failed; in the third column, mention what are the lessons learned from your failures. It helps you reflect on your mind and serves you during introspection. Preparing a failed resume will minimize your mistakes in the future and maximize your leadership success.
- Hone Your Conceptual Skills: Robert Katz said that three skills are essential in varied proportions at each level of management. They are technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills. As you reach from lower to middle and top-level management, you must possess more conceptual skills and fewer technical skills while the percentage of human skills remains constant at each level of management. Human skills can be called soft skills, and technical skills can be called hard skills. There is an equal significance attached to soft skills at each level of management but the significance for hard skills decreases when you go to senior-level positions as you do more decision-making and troubleshooting. In addition, you must provide your vision to your company. Hence, you must hone your conceptual skills to touch your tipping point.
- Blend Hard and Soft Skills: A judicious blend of hard and soft skills is essential to reach the top positions. Hard skills are about your technical aspects while soft skills are about your polite and pleasing way to communicate with others. Rather soft skills are the presentation of your hard skills. It is improper to think that hard skills alone will help you reach the top. Hard skills will get you to the top while soft skills will put you firmly on your corporate ladder.
- Emphasize EQ: David Campbell, The Center for Creative Leadership unfolds, “Half of the CEOs in the world are below average.” Your (Emotional Quotient) EQ plays a more important role than your (Intelligence Quotient) IQ. Here is the good news! EQ can be acquired through various means including reading, training, observation, experience, and practice. IQ is inborn while EQ can be cultivated. Hence, develop your EQ and blend it with IQ proportionately and effectively to reach the top.
- Work in Teams: When you work in teams you display your strengths and leverage others’ skills. You develop tolerance for others’ views and empathize with them. You also generate better results. You develop a tremendous synergy and network that will catapult you to the top quickly. Additionally, you develop emotional intelligence which is one of the key components to achieving your leadership effectiveness.
- Be an Expert in Your Domain: You must discover your strengths and talents and work on them. You must focus on them forever to achieve the desired outcomes quickly. Acquire knowledge continuously in your area of interest. Reinvent yourself with the changing times and technology. Update yourself constantly by networking with the people sharing your interests, knowledge, and understanding the latest developments. Build your online professional image to enable people to appreciate your leadership brand.
- Participate in Job Rotation: Job rotation is about doing various tasks outside your routine nature of work. It has multiple advantages. It eliminates boredom and keeps you active. You get to know what is happening in other areas. It helps you develop conceptual skills. Above all, it helps you stay motivated. Hence, undertake various roles and responsibilities beyond your assignments within the organization to know something of everything and everything of something.
- Build Your Leadership Brand: Nowadays, building a brand is imperative. It is an effective tool to build your career and project your personality to others. You must be careful before branding. Choose carefully how you would like to brand yourself as your brand will enhance your professional image and ensure longevity. You must build your brand based on your principles, philosophies, competencies, and capabilities.
- Be Loyal to Your Organization: Some employees change their jobs often for peanuts, but they must know that changing their jobs too often adversely affects their credibility. Research shows that most CEOs worked for a long period in their organizations and ultimately, they reached the top. They emphasized their careers, not jobs. When you work in an organization for a long duration, your talents will be spotted, and you will be slotted in the leadership pipeline through continuous training and development thus reaching the top quickly. Additionally, most companies promote their senior talent for CEO positions rather than hiring from outside. Job hoppers took 27 years to become CEO while the loyal ones took about 23 years to become CEO. Hence, be loyal to your organization.
- Embrace Change: The only thing constant in the world is change. Hence, change before you are forced to change. Change is painful and stressful if you view it negatively. In contrast, you enjoy every moment if you view it positively and embrace it with open arms. Remember the words of Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
- Update with Latest Technology: Technology is changing rapidly. You must update yourself with rapidly changing technology to reap benefits and save time, money, and energy. In addition, most young CEOs are from the technology domain. If you are a technology expert and do research, you will get more ideas to found your company and become a CEO in the early stage.
- Take Feedback Regularly: When you take feedback, you assess where you stand in terms of your performance and results. If you failed to achieve your goals you will be able to identify the barriers that prevented you from accomplishing your goals. You can address them and move forward aggressively.
- Look at Similarities, not Differences: The globe has become a small village connecting all people under one platform. Develop flexibility and respect for all communities. Treat diversity as an opportunity, not a challenge. Be tolerant toward other communities. Empathize with others. Love your mother but don’t hate another person’s mother. As your mother is precious to you, another person’s mother is equally precious to her. As your community is close to your heart, another person’s community is equally close to her heart. Hence, look at similarities and connect with others to gain acceptance and earn respect.
- Coach Others: When you coach others, you earn their goodwill; develop rapport with them; and excel as a true leader. Most employees prefer working with superiors who handhold and coach them. They look for career guidance and support. Hence, coach people, support them, and build leaders around you. When you do so, you stand in a better position to scale the corporate ladder quickly. Remember that real leaders build leaders around themselves.
- Learn Continuously: You must update yourself regularly with the latest tools and techniques to reach your next higher position. What worked to reach your present successful position might not work to reach your next higher position. Hence, acquire secrets and strategies, and update your tools and techniques to become more successful in your professional life.
Strategies for Global Organizations to Build Women CEOs
Here are some strategies for global organizations to build women CEOs.
- Identify the potential women in the early stage to keep them in the pipeline. Lay the ladder for their leadership development.
- Create a conducive environment to enable them to fast-track their career.
- Encourage them to pursue line positions, not staff positions. Instruct them to acquire emotional intelligence.
- Emphasize building credibility because building credibility is the first step toward effective leadership.
- Encourage them to build their personal and professional brands to stand out from others.
- Encourage girl scouts.
- Remove the prevailing strong perception that men are promoted due to potential while women are promoted due to performance.
- Adopt an integrated approach and ensure coordinated efforts from all stakeholders including organizations, women’s associations, nonprofits, and government to build women CEOs globally.
It is a well-admitted fact that organizations with high proportions of senior women leaders deliver stronger financial results. Hence, global organizations including IBM, Apple, Facebook, Deloitte, Chevron, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America emphasized the importance of women leaders, and some of them committed to grooming women leaders as CEOs. It is a step in the right direction. More global companies must come forward to empower women to excel as CEOs to build a better corporate world.
Routes to Corner Office
Women need coaches and mentors to shape their careers. The onus lies with organizations to engage passionate coaches and mentors to groom them as CEOs. Additionally, women must be ready to shoulder challenging roles and responsibilities. They must demonstrate courage and conviction. They must avoid the fear of failure and criticism. They must earn their titles by working hard and smart. They must not expect any sympathy from men because of their gender. They must come forward to encounter challenges on par with men to excel. It is improper to accuse men of their present plight. They must fight for their equal rights to assert themselves.
It is a well-admitted fact that men oversell, and women undersell. Hence, women should not hesitate to sell themselves. They must showcase their competencies and capabilities regularly. They must shed their traditional mindset and wed unconventional mindset to market themselves both within and outside the workplace to get noticed for their contributions and achievements.
Break the Glass Ceiling!
Seize the opportunities to break the glass ceiling to excel as a CEO. Don’t conceal your potential under the mountain with phobias and apprehensions. Keep honor before money to stand out as a role model for others. Remember that race to the top leadership slot is not an easy thing. It is very challenging to scale to the top slot and stay there
Create a Gender-Equal World
The world is at a crossroads currently. It is time for men to advocate gender equality globally. Remember that it is not a women’s issue anymore but a human rights issue. Hence, make your voice heard to achieve a gender-equal world. Building women’s movements globally to ensure women’s empowerment helps to some extent. However, women supporting themselves helps greatly to ensure gender equality globally. Additionally, men must extend their hands to women wholeheartedly to build an honorable and prosperous world.
Summary
“A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.” ―Maya Angelou
When a woman reaches a top slot, she is more capable than men. There is a need for all of us to break the stereotypes. Women should break their traditional mental and psychological barriers and shoulder leadership roles and responsibilities. They must work harder to prove themselves to excel as leaders in this male-dominated society. Remember that society cannot grow when one sex is denied opportunities. It is essential to let both sexes grow equally based on merit and talent. It requires empathy on the part of men and big hearts to handhold women to groom them as global leaders. If women also participate in leadership roles and responsibilities, we will find a better society with lots of prosperity and stability.
Both men and women are biologically different. That difference cannot be treated as a deficiency. It is natural for them to lead differently. Let us understand and appreciate the differences and respect them. Let us look at women not from a gender perspective but a human perspective and judge their competencies and qualifications purely based on merit. Let us look at women with new lenses. Handhold women and take them forward to leadership positions to enable them to endeavor and explore to achieve leadership effectiveness and success. To summarize, women are equal to men in all spheres. They are proving their mettle globally to assert themselves. However, they must work harder to prove themselves. They must accept the fact that there is no free lunch in the world. They must express their ambition in the early stage of their careers and work hard consistently and relentlessly with a focus and vision to excel as CEOs globally.
About the Author
Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D. is the Father of “Soft Leadership” and the Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India. He is an International Leadership Guru with forty-two years of experience and the author of fifty-two books including the award-winning ‘See the Light in You’ URL: https://www.amazon.com/See-Light-You-Spiritual-Mindfulness/dp/1949003132. He is a C-Suite advisor and global keynote speaker. He brings a strategic eye and long-range vision given his multifaceted professional experience including military, teaching, training, research, consultancy, and philosophy. He is passionate about serving and making a difference in the lives of others. He is a regular contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. He trains a new generation of leaders through leadership education and publications. His vision is to build one million students as global leaders by 2030 URL: http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com/2014/12/professor-m-s-raos-vision-2030-one_31.html. He has the vision to share his knowledge freely with one billion people globally. He advocates gender equality globally (#HeForShe). He was ranked #1 Thought Leader and Influencer in Entrepreneurship by Thinkers360 URL: https://www.thinkers360.com/top-50-global-thought-leaders-and-influencers-on-entrepreneurship-2022/. He invests his time in authoring books and blogging on executive education, learning, and leadership. Most of his work is available free of charge on his four blogs including http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com. He is a prolific author and a dynamic, energetic, and inspirational leadership speaker. He can be reached at [email protected].
References
- https://www.amazon.in/Strategies-Build-Women-Leaders-Globally/dp/1949003108
- 21 Success Sutras for CEOs: How Global CEOs Overcome Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times to Build Good to Great Organizations by M.S. Rao (Motivational Press, April 21, 2016) Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Ceos-Rao/dp/162865290X
- Student Leaders: Growing From Students To CEOs by M.S. Rao (Shroff Publishers & Distributors Pvt Ltd, July 1, 2013) Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Student-Leaders-Growing-Students-CEOs/dp/9351101630
- Women CEOs Speak: Strategies for the next generation of female executives and how companies can pave the road, Korn Ferry Institute (2017) Retrieved from https://engage.kornferry.com/womenceosspeak
- Women in senior management: setting the stage for growth (2013) Grant Thornton International Business Report 2013 Retrieved from www.grantthornton.cn/upload/IBR_2013_Women_in_senior_management_EN.pdf