How Do Women Entrepreneurs Excel in Business?
For five years now, women have been one of the largest demographic of people starting up businesses. Yet, they are also going under about as fast as they are starting up. “What are women doing wrong in business?” This is the question I’m most frequently asked when giving an interview about my book, “Discovering Your Inner Samurai: An Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success.”
As a woman entrepreneur myself, what I’ve discovered about women entrepreneurs who excel is that they do so in some ways that are similar to their male counterparts and in other ways that are distinctly different.
Both women and men entrepreneurs who excel:
* Are self-disciplined.
* Hold strong, clear visions about the direction of their companies.
* Follow detailed plans of action to support their visions.
* Know how to make tough-call.
* Use coaches and mentors to keep them strategically aligned for success.
* Exude confidence and determination.
* See problems, failures, and setbacks as opportunities, openings, and clarifiers.
Women entrepreneurs do all that and then some. More often then men, women also:
* Create lifestyle businesses that encompass the full spectrum of their lives.
* Have a natural affinity for customer care and service.
* Are three parts “strong woman” and one part “good girl.”
* Have strong, values-led businesses. – Follow and trust their intuition.
* Are “whole”-istic in their decision-making.
* Measure success by their quality of interaction with people and how much they help others.
Top Five Mistakes Made by Women in Business
1. Letting them see you sweat.
Too many times I’ve seen women, when they aren’t feeling confident about themselves or their abilities, disclose their lack of confidence. They do this by asking lots of questions before they even look at a project, hedging when it comes to making a commitment, as well as breaking eye contact and fidgeting.
Showing lack of confidence, either by word or action, is a self-defeating behavior. Never let them see you sweat! Say yes. Then figure out how to deliver.
2. Displaying negative emotions.
Displaying anger, bitterness, or spite is never attractive. Turning into the victim or martyr when things don’t go your way by whining, complaining, or blaming is counterproductive. Don’t defend yourself, argue, or yell at your clients or colleagues. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t cry!
Without a doubt, you can deal with every challenge in business without being negative. Instead, take action. Offer a solution.
3. Making excuses.
Women seem to think that, if they explain why they didn’t return a call, answer an email, show up on time, or meet a deadline, everyone will understand and it will be okay. Not so.
Excuses convey to the other person that what you were doing was more important than what someone else wanted you to do. An explanation means you are asking permission to be excused for what you did not do.
Instead, be impeccable with your word. Do as you say.
4. Being bitchy.
Take your cue from Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer: Stay calm and assertive. You do not have to act tough, be bitchy, or come across aggressively in business. Instead, stay calm, be assertive, and establish a cooperative model when dealing with others.
5. Making decisions from a “scarcity mentality.”
Too many women have a mindset of scarcity when it comes to their businesses. They believe they lack time, money is scarce, and there aren’t enough customers. They don’t understand that near-term lack infects long-term prosperity. Therefore, make decisions for your business based on the far-term vision of expansion and growth.
Both women and men can and do succeed as business owners. Many of the things that men have been doing right for years can easily be adopted and put into practice by women. However, as a woman entrepreneur, it is also important for you to do two additional things. First, cultivate the instinctive qualities and skills that are specifically characteristic of women in business. Next, start to eliminate the five top mistakes women make in business. If you implement these key steps, you’re bound to excel as a woman entrepreneur.
Situational Leadership Theory In Change Management – Different Strokes For Different Folks
Given the catastrophic 70% failure rate of all change management initiatives, the quality of leadership exercised is clearly a significant component in reducing this risk.
In essence, situational leadership theory emphasises 2 areas:
(1) “Different strokes for different folks” – different leadership styles are applicable to different situations
(2) “Cometh the hour cometh the man” – leadership extends potentially to just about everyone in an organisation – at some time
Dr Paul Hersey, who is closely associated with the development of situational leadership theory, suggested in a fairly recent presentation that: “… a situational leader is anyone, anywhere who recognises that influencing behaviour is not an event but a process. The process entails assessing followers’ performance in relation to what the leader wants to accomplish and providing the appropriate amounts of guidance and support.”
According to change management guru John Kotter “…today’s organizations need heroes at every level. To truly succeed in a turbulent world, more than half the workforce needs to step up to the plate in some arena and provide change leadership.”
To my mind, the idea that effective leaders change their leadership styles to fit the situation is an expansion of Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s “Managerial Grid” theory, which suggest that the effective leader “moves appropriately” along the spectrum of task versus relationship orientation.
4 Communication Components
According to a recent study [Baker, Brown], successful use of situational leadership relies on effectiveness in four communication components:
- Communicating expectations
- Listening
- Delegating
- Providing feedback
The Hersey and Blanchard Leadership Model takes this all a bit further and introduces the notion that the level of development or maturity of the followers is also something that the leader takes into account.
“Maturity” in this context to do with the preparedness and ability of a person to take responsibility for directing his or her own behaviour in relation to a specific task in a specific situation.
4 Distinct Leadership Styles
Clearly the appropriate leadership style to use in a given situation is going to be determined by the leader’s assessment of the maturity level of the followers in that specific situation. The leader will move appropriately long the task-directive versus relationship-supportive spectrum.
Four distinct leadership styles are identified in the Hershey and Blanchard Leadership Model – each reflecting the evolving levels of maturity of the followers:
(1) Directing – the leader is very directive providing clear, specific instructions
(2) Coaching – whilst the leader retains control of decision making, he/she encourages two-way communication and helps build confidence and motivation on the part of his/her people
(3) Supporting – the people no longer need the leader to tell them what to do or to make the decisions – so decision making is shared
(4) Delegating – when the people are ready, willing and able the leader delegates full responsibility to them
Whilst I agree with this style of flexible leadership, I have to say that, in a change management context, extending leadership throughout an organisation in the manner suggested is asking a lot of most organisations as it requires a complete and total change of culture.
Also, all of this is dependent on the supporting framework of change management processes that are derived from adopting a programme-based approach to leading and managing the change.
For more on this: ” Situational leadership theory “
Equip yourself to avoid the 70% failure rate of all change initiatives with the “Practitioners’ Masterclass – Leading your people through change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business.”
THE ART OF MANAGING LEADERSHIP IN CHANGING ENVIRONMENT
THE ART OF MANAGING LEADERSHIP IN
CHANGING ENVIRONMENT
ABSTRACT
Leadership is the ability to inspire confidence and support among the people who are needed to achieve organization goals. It is the process of providing the direction and inspiration necessary to create or sustain an organization.
The 21st century has already spawned a sizable volcano of daunting new challenges to leadership. Deregulation, digitization, ecosystems, strategy life cycles, and competition at present, represents change have permanent rhythm for every business firm. This change process gives a role of decision making initiative for the leaders such as:
1) Broadening the scope of employee freedom by managing less, without sacrificing focus, discipline, and order.
2) Creating an organization where the spirit of shared values and community dominate, not programs and policies.
3) Providing for a mission that justifies extraordinary contribution .etc
The best effective decisions made within the available limited resources and constraints to provide an optimum solution for the change process makes a leader and a manager to achieve their objectives in many change process. Further to handle the change initiatives efficiently an organization must recognize that succession planning and leadership development are two elements of the same process that of ensuring there are leaders now and in the future who can implement the organizational vision .while succession planning can identify those individuals who have the abilities ,talent and potential to turn the vision of the organization into reality, the alignment to leadership development can ensure that this potential is realized .In so doing, an organization can ensure that there is indeed long term leadership sustainability and opportunities of entrepreneurship this will be a source of having competitive advantage of developing next generation leaders in the years to come for an organization to succeed .
Introduction
Leadership is the energetic process of getting people fully and willingly committed to a new and sustainable course of action to meet commonly agreed objectives whilst having commonly held values. Leader’s values must offer 4E’s frame work-envision, enable, empower and energize, for establishing a climate for creative thinking and promote innovation.
21′st century has already experienced with deregulation, digitization, globalization,
Strategic business management, the result is familiar to every business firm “Change”,
Change is a common occurrence in business today. Leading change describes the role of leaders in accepting and managing many change process .many of the change initiatives fail to achieve their objectives because (1) Absence of a definition of what actually would constitute organizational success. (2) “Results” a powerful concept if left unmanaged, poses a risk in future. (3) Intransparency ie, lack of clarity of the changing situation. (4) Lack of succession planning and building bench strength.
Leadership attempts to have integrated systems to solve the problems of change process.
“Leadership is about being adaptable to change and uncertainty” (Mark .A. Morgan MD of citigroup private bank).
An organization to develop the next generation leaders should consider the following important points such as (1) Identifying core set of skills to equip leaders of next generation. (2) Tracking and networking alumni of young professionals. (3) Determining the value of pooling program evaluation efforts. (4) Recognizing the key challenges in finding the resources and enhancing youth programes.
Key words: Leadership sustainability & roles, change process, toxic leadership etc.
Contemporary Leadership Roles
The 4 contemporary leadership roles that are important for the organization to achieve its objectives are:
Providing team leadership
Leadership is increasingly taking place within a team context .as teams grow in popularity; the role of the leader in guiding team members takes on heightened importance.
Mentoring
Organizations have formal mentoring programs where mentors are officially assigned to new or high –potential employees to present ideas clearly, and empathize with problems of their protégés.
Self leadership
Self –leadership propose that there are a set of processes through which individuals control their own behavior and effective leaders help their followers to lead themselves.
Online leadership
To lead the people who are physically separated from you and with whom your interactions are basically to written digital communications like telecommuting with employees you need online leadership.
Factors for effective leadership
(1) Follower. (2) Leader (3) Communication (4) Situation
Figure showing factors of effective leadership
Factors influencing changes in organizations environment
Globalization and developments in the field of information and technology.
New management strategies and the competitiveness in the business environment.
Implementation of news business processes.
New goals and performance standards established in the business
Structural changes in the economy. Etc
Need for implementation of change in the organization’s environment
Based on Michael E Porter’s five forces of competitive position we can analyze that there is a need for “change” in the organization to survive in the competitive modern business.
Michael Porter’s five forces:
Existing competitive rivalry between suppliers
Threat of new market entrants.
Bargaining power of buyer
Power of suppliers
Threat of substitute products (including technology change)
Leadership role and responsibility in implementing change in organization
Organizational culture is the primary source of resistance to change a leader should understand the organization culture and then plan the change process.
The use of value based management model 0f 7-s model can be helpful in implementation of change by coordinating 7-s namely, shared value, strategy, structure, system, staff, style and skill. (MC Kinsey’s 7-s framework)
Leadership should determine clear decision making framework to ensure the organization has means and resources to achieve its goals.
Analyzing the change process through a experimental project with the five factors such as project duration, the project teams performance ,integrity of management commitment, employee commitment and employee effort required to cope with the change that are essential to be implemented.
Change can be implemented through organizational transformation by ensuring succession planning initiatives are closely aligned to leadership and development and organizational vision
Ensuring that succession planning process occurs in such a way that it is in itself a transforming experience.
Drawbacks of implementation of changes in the organization.
Some the reasons why change initiatives fail to achieve their objectives are:
Absence of clear definition of what actually constitute organizational success
Lack of knowledge about changing situation in business environment.
Lack of integration between succession planning and leadership with organizational vision.
Toxic leadership performance.
Lack of planning premises and constraints, inadequacy of resources and means to implement the planned change process.
Toxic leadership and organization
Toxic /Bad leadership is one of the main reason we can point out for the failure to implementation of change in the organization. “A Toxic leader is someone who has responsibility over organizations employees but abuses the leader –follower relationship by leaving the organization in a worse condition than when he/she first found them”. (Barbara Kellerman)
Barbara Kellerman analyzes Toxic/bad leadership into seven different types:
(1)Incompetent (2) Rigid (3) Intemperate (4) Callous (5) Corrupt (6) Insular (7) Evil.
Toxic leadership can effect organization in change implementation by following way:
Lack of definition of vision, strategy and business plan.
Inappropriate execution of the vision, plan strategy and business plan.
Lack of team building skills and business ethics.
Lack of sponsoring, supporting, measuring results.
Destruction of organizational culture, values and employees trust and confidence.
Understanding the change process
Understanding the change process helps the leader of present and future generation to develop the suitable technique to solve problems in initiating change process in organization. To understand problems, determining the characteristics of the difficult problem is key to initiate change process.
Dietrich Dorner and Joachim Funke have elucidated typical characteristics of difficult problem they are as follows:
Intransparency-lack of clarity of situation.
Polytely-multiple goals which have
a) Inexpressiveness.
b) Opposition
c) Transience
complexity- large number of items interrelations and decisions which have
a) Enumerability.
b) Connectivity(hierarchy relation ,communication relation, allocation relation)
c) Heterogeneity.
Dynamics- time considerations, which have
a) Temporal constraints
b) Temporal sensitivity
c) Phase effects
d) Dynamic unpredictability
Problem Solving Techniques
Abstraction: solving the problem in a model of the system before applying it to the real system.
Analogy: using a solution that solved an analogous problem.
Brainstorming: (especially among the groups and teams)suggesting a large number of solutions or ideas and combining and developing them until an optimum is found.
Divide and conquer: breaking down a large complex problem into smaller, solvable problems.
Hypothesis testing: assuming a possible explanation to the problem and trying to prove the assumption
Lateral thinking: approaching solutions indirectly and creatively.
Means-ends analysis: choosing an action at each step to move closer to the goal.
Method of focal objects: synthesizing seemingly non-matching characteristics of different objects into something new.
Morphological analysis: assessing the output and interactions of an entire system
10. Reduction: transforming the problem into another problem for which solutions exist.
11. Research: employing existing ideas or adapting existing solutions to similar problems.
12. Root cause analysis: eliminating the cause of the problem.
13. Trial and error: testing possible solutions until the right one is found.
Developing The Leaders Of Next Generation
Michael G.Winston who has been working with fortune 50 companies partnering with key executives in developing the next generation of leadership explains how they develop the next generation of leaders.
Seeking and securing top management support
Leadership development initiatives are launched with clear communication from the senior executives explaining the mission, strategy, objectives and expectations for participant’s .later stage measurement tools are designed to assess and reinforce leadership accountability for results.
Determining required skill sets.
Firstly you define key leadership requirement and develop a plan to improve critical skills and competencies required to implement the current and projected business strategy and review both current and prospective markets, competitors, customers, channels and determine critical success factor.
Building Best-in-class leadership development initiatives
An integrated and highly focused set of initiatives is crafted that should reflect the company’s strategic agenda, address critical challenges and opportunities and strengthen leadership capability ,programs are generally used as a combination of company’s presenters, external world-class subject matter experts,E-learning technologies and post-program project work to reinforce key strategic initiatives.
Launching a tiered Talent Identificfation,Assessment and Succession process
Succession management is a critical activity in business organizations must serve to identify, develop and retain those people who are able to deliver superior performance both individually and as a part of team. This can be done like:
Alignment of top performers to most critical jobs.
Identification of successor candidates for key roles
Assessment of strengths across key competencies
Identification and development of high potentials.
Identification and elimination of key succession gaps.
Figure showing how to strengthening talent development in the organization.
Developing an enterprise perspective
The CEO can ensure a balanced focus on leadership development and business
Needs as well as movement of people across organizational boundaries. This will
Promote sustainable leadership in the organization
Integrating the organization
Creation of an organizational integration function provides diagnostic processes to identify and eliminate or reduce the overlap and duplication that often emerges in decentralized structures. High impact instruments can be created and implanted to identify and build upon key organizational, structural process and leadership elements to strengthen and enhance business performance.
Metrics for driving accountability
Systems are then installed to hold line managers accountable for building leadership.
Leadership development and succession becomes an unavoidable “gate” for promotion and significantly affect compensation, this can be understood with the diagram given below
Figure showing metrics for driving accountability
8. Institutionalizing the process
Ultimately the objective is to institutionalize a simple consistent process across the enterprise which promotes leadership and succession cycles
Leadership and Entrepreneurship
It is leadership style that creates the appropriate climate for entrepreneurship and innovation in an organization.successfull leaders are not only good executives they are also great entrepreneurs .a entrepreneur today has to face several changes in the organization .he has to adapt the change process efficiently and convert the disadvantages of changes into advantages of business for which entrepreneur needs strong leadership qualities mentioned in above paragraphs leadership ,creativity, ability to solve problems makes a leader successful entrepreneur.
Conclusion and Suggestions
A. Overtime the management team realizes that the above initiatives for leadership development can be great differentiator clearly a company’s organizational structures, its executive rediness, its process for creating and sustaining a high performance culture and its ability to continuously staff with the best people are required distinctive competencies for future success.
B. Only by aligning succession planning to leadership development, a sustainable leadership for long period can be achieved.
C. Succession planning process should result in a transformational experience to the organization or else it is ineffective process.
D. As the economy today is a knowledge economy updating adequate skills adds to the leadership performance minimizing the future uncertainties
E. An extraordinary opportunity to change your organization should be converted into an ultimate advantage of business; a late decision to implement change imposes risk in the future.
Pradeep Raj.S
MBA Student
Bangalore, India.
Email:pradeepraj1@live.com
Reference and End Notes
Andrew J. DuBrin- Leadership research findings, practice and skills.2008 edition by biztantra.
Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A. Judge –organizational behavior 12th edition by Pearson education.
Using succession planning to transform organizations-Rosie Steeves, PH.D and Barbara Ross .DenRoche, M.A.journal from The Centre for Exceptional Leadership 2003.
Internal communication of change –Journal by Dagmar Reclies on www.themanager.org.
porter’s five forces model-journal by Michael Porter on www.businessballs.com
Kellerman, Barbara –Bad leadership, what it is, how it happens, why it matters?
Harvard Business School press .September 2004.
Dorner.D and Wearing. A (1995) Complex problem solving Journal/wall street journal.
Developing the next generation of leadership by Michael G.Winston on www.linkageinc.com .
7/27/2010
e Leadership Skills – A Leader’s Core Strength
<p>First, you have got to be sensible with people. Leadership is very interpersonal, thus several people skills are involved. To call a few: listening, accepting feedback, giving feedback and resolving conflict. These are skills you utilize with folks, and you can learn them.</p>
<p>But folks skills take you only thus far. You would like one thing else. A lot of individuals say, "It’s not just what you’ll do, it’s who you are." I speak concerning this as "personal strengths" – behavior patterns such as honesty, integrity, compassion, composure, perseverance, initiative and dozens more. Some individuals ask them as "character," "heart" or "grit." These are not passive traits, attributes or qualities. They are not real in the slightest degree till you manifest them in your behavior with people.</p>
<p>Most of the time, you employ a personal strength as a result of it is your habit to try to to so – your approach of acting with people. Personal strengths are kind of like leadership skills in that they are behavior patterns. Throughout your life, you learned to operate a sure method in a very explicit situation. After you listen, you do it a bound way. Or, say you’ve got to house a crisis. If you take responsibility and tell the reality, it’s as a result of that is your method of behaving in that situation.</p>
<p>I take advantage of the term "personal strengths" as a result of these behavior patterns are exhausting to engage. You aren’t born with them. People skills and personal strengths are learned. Each individual is at a different stage along the trail of personal development. Folks can be sturdy in some skills or strengths, and there can be areas they have to figure on. They may find it simple to act with honesty and integrity, because they’ve perpetually acted that way. But perhaps it’s not thus straightforward to require a risk. Or maybe they have bother staying calm, cool and picked up when the globe’s on fire around them.</p>
<p>So if you are somebody who’s answerable for others, you ought to make the best use of your strengths, and you should in all probability continually be operating on some aspect of effective leadership skills.</p>
<p>How do you know when you’ve got "arrived," when you can stop operating on obtaining stronger as a frontrunner?</p>
<p>I do not suppose you ever arrive. How smart a listener can you be? How patient can you be? How compassionate? It’s like asking a golfer how sensible a golfer can he be? How smart will a musician be? Would anyone striving for excellence say, "I’m finally at the top of my learning. I am as smart at this as I will possibly be." No, they achieve higher levels of excellence by regularly striving to improve.</p>
<p>This principle conjointly holds true for managers. If you would like effective leadership skills and personal strengths, you never stop improving. One reason is that there are dozens of folks skills and dozens of non-public strengths. Nobody will be sturdy in all of them. Mastery may be a lifelong journey.</p>
<p>The journey begins when you are answerable for your initial group. You realize that getting the simplest work from individuals isn’t easy. You create mistakes. However mistakes are one of the simplest ways in which to learn. Learn from every experience, learn from your feedback, and learn from the coaching you get from additional experienced managers. The educational happens when you really attempt one thing different.</p>
<p>Self-awareness may be a massive help. Listen to feedback. Take an honest look at yourself, and you may recognize what you ought to specialise in next. And as you succeed as a frontrunner, as you accept a lot of responsibility, bear in mind this: you can still continue your growth as a frontrunner – one space at a time.</p>
Overview On Leadership
Leadership is required in different sectors like business, social, educational, general etc. Or rather basically it can be associated with management and effective team work. We have seen the impact of leadership on society, whether it is prehistoric times, recent history or the current scenario. It has always been a significant factor and will continue to remain in future.
Leadership brings along with it authority, power and responsibility. A full inventory of characteristics makes it one of the most daunting positions. With the inevitable changes in the world the requirements for leadership also change. You may find it very difficult to change your strategies every now and then. Monitoring the overall business strategies and maneuvering yours accordingly is a very complicated task.
Everyone cannot be leader but anyone can strive to be one. If you are not born with the essential qualities then you can cultivate them there is no shortage of resources for this purpose like you can take help of leadership books. The basic principles and ethics of leadership have not changed since its conception therefore these books will always remain relevant.
If you are concerned about any particular scenario or circumstances then there is a series of articles on leadership that are at your manifestation on internet it comprises of the experiences, views and observations of experts they provide guidelines which may help you to sail through any crisis or turmoil.
The best way to tackle the difficulties in leadership related issues is to get associated with a leadership development training program. Here under the preaching of an experienced person you can get an insight on foresightedness, mobilizing and motivating people, envisioning future etc. If you cannot attend these programs due to schedule then you may join an internet based training program which is designed according to your needs.
Improve Your Leadership Skills – New Leadership Skills Exposed
There are so much to do for you to improve your leadership skills. If you think that you really to do a lot inorder for you to improve what you had advocate, then that could be possible. A person should really consider trhings positively for them to have an effective improvement or change.
Click Here to Learn How to Lead Effectively.
You have to have charisma and gain all lyour people’s trust. That could really be considered as a very effective ingredient that needs to be applied. Why don’t we try to involve researching such enhancements for the improvements to be attained.
For us on how to improve leadership skills, we have to endure things in different kinds of aspects and perspective. We have to wave up optimism in a higher level, for us to be able to see what it could give us as well as where it could take us althroughout our leadership journey.
We could consider ot as a significant pat of the improvement that might happen if you aim for one. Leadeship skills is that important so we really have to grab such skills and enhance it.Slightly involve caring personally to the people that surrounds you. We have to establish personal perspectives towards people inorder for us to succeed in whatever goal we are to set as a leader.You have to make sure that you really put your heart to what you are doing.
You have to do things positively for you to attain effectiveness in improving our leadership skills. Sharing would also put us to the top, for if we know how to decide then preferably we should know how to listen as well as understand wehat we need to know as leaders. Serving people is always an option, so we should take part of helping other people preferably those who are really in need.
Click Here to Learn How to Lead Effectively.