What’s holding you back

What comes to your mind when someone says ‘like a girl’? You walk ‘like a girl’, talk ‘like a girl’, throw ‘like a girl’…. Is it an image depicting weakness that comes to mind, or is it an image depicting strength? I can almost accurately guess that it was weakness that came to your thoughts. Why? How is it that ‘doing something like a girl’ turned out to be such a bad thing?

Women account for more than 50 percent of professional jobs, but when it comes to positions in leadership, the presence of women is seriously diminished. If you take the Fortune 500 list, only 4.6 percent of women are CEOs and there’s only 14.6 percent of companies which have female executive officers.

If you really think about it though, all these barriers that women are supposedly facing cannot be accounted to restrictions in traditional workplaces. There are many instances when women are held back by nothing but their own self-made barriers.

Speaking about the possibility of having a female President, Hillary Clinton mentioned how women’s executive abilities seems to be questioned as an ingrained problem, whether referring to the political sphere or corporate boardroom.

There are several things that women themselves are sometimes fearful of. Let’s take a quick look at some of them. See if you can identify with any of these!

The issues outlined are only stumbling blocks and there’s much that women can do to overcome these and push forward. Here’s s few tips you could try, whether you’re just starting out or whether you’re halfway up the ladder:

Just be you: When I started working, I was under the impression that if I act in a particular way and show a toughness, I’d be able to get along better, and when I say get along better, I guess I meant be more successful. But I slowly realised the power of being myself and connecting with people is so much stronger than being aloof. So as I started to open up and be myself, I saw my relationships within the company grow and this brought a very simple open culture within the work environment.

Follow your instincts: The female of the species has great instincts, you can rarely contest that statement. We must be bold enough to take decisions. Calculated as they may be, everything comes with a risk, but it is important to trust your instincts and follow through. The road isn’t easy, but it leads to a better place.

Love the flaws: Well, the road isn’t easy and those things that make it difficult….well, embrace them, learn from them and push ahead. Don’t be afraid to talk about your mistakes because the lessons you have learnt from them are invaluable. Being open with them means you teach the people around you and are also able to mentor them, so they are unlikely to make those same blunders.

Do it like a woman
Being a woman in a position of leadership means the mix of talent, experience, thoughts and expertise is so much more different to having a man in a leadership role. A company’s mindset, future forecasts, thinking processes and goals can change so much when a woman takes the lead.

Research shows that amongst the Fortune 500 companies, the ones which have more women on the board succeeded in hitting significantly bigger numbers in terms of financial performance.
The question now is how do companies go about taking more women on board and making sure they are looked after well, so that in turn the company itself reaps the benefits of greater productivity. Well, the answer to that question isn’t too difficult to map out:

• Provide guidance and reinforcement
  The likelihood of a woman’s success professionally increases when they are mentored and guided.
• Let her have her family
  Being a working woman should not be a reason to not have a family and having a family should not be a reason not to pursue a career. Creating work ethics that are family friendly like flexi work hours and in house child care will go a long way in helping women to succeed professionally.
• Hear her out
  As a woman in the workplace, it is easy to be unheard with all the male colleagues gaining more coverage. Women should not feel they must just agree for the sake of maintaining their status in the office. Let them speak up and be heard, and listen to them.

Having women in the workplace isn’t a bad thing at the end of the day. They bring an array of skills to the table, including an affinity to connecting with people, providing them guidance and reinforcement, identifying needs and issues within a workplace and addressing them sensitively and juggling more than just one thing at a time.

Being like a girl may be perceived as a negative thing in the society and it may be a while before that mind-set is completely transformed, but that doesn’t mean women have to stay true to that thinking; it would be so much more fun to prove it wrong!