The author of an article in forbesindia.com lists out three gaping areas that need a lot of work in developing women leadership in India.
While it is challenging, it is possible to bridge these gap areas and bring women leaders to the next level in their careers. This will benefit individuals, organizations, communities and the country as a whole.
* There is a false sense of control that many women feel in remaining individual contributors.
This resistance to seeking promotion to a people manager role is often limited by this false perception of having to take on more meetings, staying back late and in essence lesser work-life balance with the increased responsibility.
This one self-limiting belief prevents a lot of individual contributors ready for people manager roles holding themselves back.
They must learn to manage themselves better, including understanding their work life and personal life needs. Some may need to improve their time management and organisation skills.
These women must learn to get comfortable with self promotion, advancing their network, negotiating and asking for what they need. Honing their people skills is a must. Getting a mentor, someone who has done this before may be is a good way to prepare them.
* Leadership is the ability to influence and inspire others towards, the leaders, team or organisations goals.
This means you need to use your talents skills and abilities. You need to help the organisation reach its goals while working effectively with others.
To achieve the last part business, strategic and financial expertise is needed. It is important to be adept at understanding where the organisation is going, what its targets are and their role in taking the business there.
It is possible that there has not been enough faith or appreciation of how ready these ladies may be to rise and sustain themselves at the helm of organisations. The door opener to the top layer is the business, strategic and financial expertise is never told to them.
This conventional advice needs to change for them to be able to breakthrough.
* There is a pool of smart, intelligent women with good experience and work ethic that have taken a break typically to raise children. Once their children are reasonably independent, these women are ready to rejoin the workforce.
There are lots of advantages for organisations to hire this segment.
• They come back with a renewed energy and enthusiasm to be back in the work force, unlike some of the counterparts that have been in the same environment for years.
• If they settle well in the company while striking a good personal life balance, the chances of them sticking around longer and helping maintain good employee engagement numbers is high.
• Their on boarding costs compared to a fresh graduate are much lower since they are already familiar with the corporate culture.
• They come back with a lot more maturity and high emotional quotient.
