Emerging Women Leaders

Women all over the world are making progress at workplaces- more in certain countries than others. Women leaders however, have additional challenges that need to be dealt with. The Wall Street Journal asked a few leading women about these specific challenges and the ways in which they overcame them.

Angela Braly, the CEO of WellPoint believes that success is not determined by gender but people. She adds that women should be open to risks and to take on challenging assignments and take control from there. Keycorp’s Beth Mooney agrees saying that she too had taken on many such assignments that were rejected by others. Once you manage to succeed at something that is difficult, it is hard for people to ignore your capabilities.

The CEO of Xerox, Ursula Burns says that taking risks has enabled her to transform her company into one of the leading firms in the tech market.  Other leading women suggest that women should always pursue learning. Once a job is mastered, one should move on to the next, to learn more.

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Denise Morrison, Campbell Soup, always knew she wanted to be a leader. She planned ahead and benefitted highly from it. She says, "I developed a strategic process for my career plan that set the final destination, developed the career track, identified skills to build, took line positions to gain experience, and sought leadership and management training on the job, through special assignments, coaching and networking.”

Garcia Martore of Gannet advises women, that to lead an organization, they need to be comfortable in their own skin. Being confident makes others believe in you. Most women feel uncomfortable about tooting their own horns. They believe they should work hard and people around them would eventually recognize their efforts- it doesn’t work that way, says Maggie Wilderotter, CEO, Frontier Communications. Sharing her personal experience in the boardroom, she reveals that once she made a comment in a meeting. Just minutes later, a male colleague said the same thing and everyone took notice. She advises women to try and change these dynamics than to just sit around waiting for things to change.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303879604577410520511235252