All Articles Tagged "female executives"
Power Play: 9 Secrets Of Successful Female Leaders Revealed
Do women lead a certain way? According to Sharon Hadary and Laura Henderson, authors of How Women Lead: The 8 Essential Strategies Successful Women Know, there are fundamental differences between women and men business leaders. Inc.com asked Hadary and Henderson the secrets of successful women’s leadership styles. Madame Noire asked a group of powerful female executives to reveal theirs as well.
iStockphoto
Own Your Destiny–and Judge Yourself Only by Your Own Metrics
Hadary and Henderson found in their research that women who achieve most are also women who define success in their own terms. And that they aim high. “Women should think of their businesses as a $1 million business from Day One,” says Henderson. “This drives how they structure the business, the decisions they make, and the way they present themselves and the business.”
Key To Success? Do Businesswomen Need Male Mentors To Get Ahead?
iStockphoto
Women! Want to get ahead in business? Get a male mentor, say a group of success female entrepreneurs.
A panel made up of female entrepreneurs and investors spoke at the International Women’s Forum World Leadership Conference about how they found success in startups. “The women suggested that they didn’t get to where they are today by relying on other women for support or advice; men played an important role in their achievements,” reports Inc.com.
“Male mentors for women are critical. It has been critical for me,” said Mariam Naficy, founder of e-commerce sites Minted.com and Eve.com.
According to Inc.com, venture capitalist and Stanford professor Ann Muira-Ko, who is in a male-dominated industry, said she survived by “learning from the men in her space. Whether it was in a computer science class or while working with startups in Silicon Valley, Muira-Ko says she made meaningful male connections (including working during college with then-HP CEO Lewis Platt) that helped her start angel investment firm FLOODGATE with male co-founder Mike Maples.”
Entrepreneurial and financial consultant Princess Clark-Wendel agrees. She feels women better learn the way men operate in the workplace from being mentored by men in their industry. “Both men and women get things done in their own ways, however, the truth is we work and see things differently. We’re different, but we need each other to survive especially in business,” she told us in an online chat. “Women can certainly learn a few things from male mentors and not just the technical aspects of business. Women, in general multitask whereas most men are focused on the task at hand. In order to succeed in business women need both energies, especially now that the world of work has changed.”
Dr. Anita Davis-DeFoe, author president of The Afia Planning and Development Corporation, a management and development leadership firm, says she consistently advises businesswomen to team up with male mentors.
“I have male mentors and they have helped me enhance my skill sets and professional competencies tremendously. Interactions, coaching and encouragement from a male mentor can help a woman sharpen all of her skills, particularly in the areas of leadership effectiveness and negotiation, skills which are essential whether leading an organization or a business,” explains Davis-DeFoe.
One skill is negotiating. “Even when we know our goods and services are worth the asking price or more, we typically have difficulty negotiating for ourselves. Women tend to operate from a transformative perspective that is working tirelessly to engage everyone in changing things for the better; this can be both challenging and unnerving,” Davis-DeFoe told Madame Noire. “Culture eats strategy for lunch, so when women have the benefit of a male mentor, they learn how to better understand and navigate… tumultuous waters.”
It seems sometimes in business, you may need to think like a man. Any ladies out there have experience with a male mentor? Let us know.
Don’t Be Fooled: Junior and Senior Women Execs Should Stick Together
There are few businesswomen that make it to the top of the nation’s largest corporations and even fewer women of color at the top. Often times these women fight hard to make a name for themselves but find when they decide to step down, their legacy is lost in the media write up of their failures. Writer and Gen Y Consultant Erica Dhawan cautions young women entering the corporate world to think twice before judging their women mentors. The media’s criticism of these powerful women often ignores the contributions these women have made to a company.
Take for instance Erin Callan, the former chief financial officer at Lehman Brothers right before its fall from the economic crisis. She was promoted too late to be able to save the firm and was publically criticized and ridiculed for her poor performance during her six months in the CFO position.
What the media failed to mention was her hard work and loyalty to the company since 1995, and how she was able to rise quickly to the top while still making time to talk with junior women at the firm to advise them on their career paths.
Then there was Sallie Krawcheck, the former Bank of America exec who supposedly “died like a man” according to Business Insider. Krawcheck had been supposedly forced out of Bank of America but her strong will and assertiveness on Wall Street throughout her career had been forgotten.
Carol Bartz was instrumental in doubling Yahoo’s operational income and margins, but was instead remembered for cursing in the workplace.
When these top businesswomen fall, young women often look down upon them and shake their heads, forgetting how hard these women worked.
Dhawan reminds young women that, “being a woman leader is about speaking and embodying what you believe, not just accommodating to an organization’s culture or pursuing media rewards.”
Have any women executives and leaders helped you along your professional journey? What can you learn from their legacy?
Madame Executives Need to Be Trailblazers
The main message from this year’s Advertising Age “Women to Watch” honorees? Step your game up.
Do Nice Gals Finish Last?
(NYTimes.com) — How strongly is pay linked to productivity? Conventional economic theory tells us that people earn more when they contribute more to society — competitive markets should reward intelligence, effort and innovation.
But many high earners seem disconnected from this idealized picture. Top banker bonuses soared even as bank profits tanked and public bailouts materialized. Over the last 30 years, the top 1 percent of American families seems to have increased its share of total income much faster than its share of productive contributions.
