Discussing an Interview: A Female Senior Leader Shed Some Light on the Issues That Women Face in Business Sphere Essay

Introduction: An Overview of the Business Development

Company leadership and leadership skills development have become rather topical issues over the past few decades.

Analyzing some of the issues that have been raised in the course of an interview with a women who has been in a leadership position for a considerable amount of time, one can possibly understand what issues the business world is facing at the moment, as well as analyze the typical characteristics of a leader in general and a female leader in particular..

The Role and Responsibilities of a Leader: A King in His Castle

One of the basic complexities about being a leader is that the given position presupposes that a person is able to play many roles equally well.

To be more exact, a good leader is supposed to be able to plan the further strategy of the company according to the statistical data, make important financial decisions, consider the ideas that the employees offer and choose the most reasonable ones, coordinate the work of different departments, etc.

Basically, being a leader means being able to plan the further course of actions that the company is going to undertake, including financial, economical, industrial, organizational ones, etc.

As a result, a leader plays several roles in the organization. As it follows from the interview with a female leader of a large company, a leader is supposed to play the following roles in a company:

Representative of the organization

A leader is supposed to be the face of his own company; by having a conversation with the leader of an entrepreneurship, people, as a rule, evaluate his/her organization.

While it is a bit unfair that the work of so many people (i.e., employees, managers, etc.) is assessed on the merits of a leader alone, often the potential customers have no other way to learn about the company other than talking to its leader or learning about him/her in the local news.

Therefore, a leader is personally responsible to every single member of the company for every step that (s)he makes, since these steps have a tangible influence on the company’s reputation.

Strategist

Needless to say, being a leader presupposes being able to plan the company’s further development and, therefore, the further actions that need to be undertaken.

In addition, a leader must always have a backup plan that must be implemented in case anything goes wrong with the current strategy.

Coordinator

Any organization works like a complex mechanism, with every element in its place. Once a single item goes out of the chord, the whole structure falls apart, and a good leader knows it well. Therefore, the work between various departments must be well coordinated.

Conflict solver

Unfortunately, conflicts are an integral part of working in any organization.

Moreover, most conflicts should not be regarded as something negative; on the contrary, conflicts should be considered as an exercise in problem solving and helping employees adapt towards the changes in a company, as well as set an example of an expected organizational behavior.

To be more exact, the absence of conflicts within an organization record is not the sign of good leadership; instead, productively solved conflicts are.

Tactician

Although planning is a crucial skill for a company leader, a number of issues must be decided on the spot, and changing the strategy within such a short amount of time is practically impossible.

Therefore, a leader must be a very good tactician and be able to find a perfect solution for a specific problem in a moment. Therefore, ability to think fast and logically is a crucial skill for a company leader.

Women as Potential Leaders: Why Female Leadership Can and Must Be Encouraged

Since the business world has been dominated by men for quite long, even nowadays, it is extremely hard for women to get promoted to a higher position, not to mention becoming the leader of an enterprise.

It must be admitted that, because of chauvinist policies that a number of companies follow discretely, talented and enthusiastic women bump into obstacles when trying to get promoted to the position of a leader.

Although in the present-day world, the issue concerning female leaders of the company has already been brought up and specific initiatives have been started to make sure that companies avoid gender discrimination and/or segregation, sexist attitudes are not a rare encounter in many companies nowadays.

There is no doubt that the approaches chosen my male and female leaders are strikingly different; the reasons for the line drawn between a male and a female leadership style is often attributed to a specific manner of upbringing boys and girls.

For example, even the toys that children play with teach children to apply different skills. There are toy guns for boys to learn to find, save the day and be on top, and dolls for girls to nurture their motherly instincts. Hence, the difference in the leadership approaches stems.

However, this difference does not mean that women are worse leaders than men – far from it; on the contrary, a number of feminine qualities contribute to becoming a good leader.

Ability to use transformational leadership style

Countless researches have supported the idea that, no matter how perfect a once chosen leadership strategy might be, following the same particular leadership style for ions without changing it will not do a company any good.

However, due to the specific qualities that men train since the childhood, they often appear not to be able to switch fast and smoothly from one leadership style to another.

Unlike men, women, who are known for their flexibility and ability to keep their focus on several issues simultaneously, are generally better at switching to different strategies according to the specifics of the situation in question.

Known as transformational leadership, the given approach has proven to be the most efficient one at present.

Avoiding stressful situations and other conflicts

As it has been mentioned above, many women are trained to use their motherly qualities since the childhood.

Although the given trait of many women’s characters might be considered a tad annoying, it still can be applied to the business environment. By using her skills of softening the rough edges, a woman as leader of

A company is most likely to create a comfortable working environment and, therefore, improve the employees’ performance and/or the production process without putting strain on the employees.

Practically born into being a diplomatist, a woman can handle a conflict within a company by applying various leadership types and introducing efficient behavioral models in a very successful way.

Acknowledging mistakes

To err is human, and, therefore, a company leader, as well as any other member of the company, will inevitably make a blunder sooner or later.

The question is, however, not what the others will think of this slip, but what the leader will learn from it and whether the leader will be able to acknowledge his/her mistake.

As a rule, male leaders are often reluctant to acknowledge their faults, since they are concerned whether the rest of the company will learn about this blunder and make fun of them.

Women, on the opposite, acknowledge their mistakes rather easily, which means that they are ready to learn the lessons from these mistakes to avoid similar blunders in the future.

When speaking of women in the leadership positions, the policies and the cultural specifics of the Muslim states, such as the UAE must be mentioned.

As it is commonly known, in the UAE, as well as in a range of other Muslim countries, women traditionally are offered the role of a housewife and a babysitter by the society, whereas having a career has long been unacceptable in the UAE.

Although it has been a while since the state officially recognized the right of the UAE women to work and be promoted, many women still find it hard to fight discrimination and chauvinism at work.

Therefore, it takes more than enthusiasm for women in the UAE to take the chair of a company president; as a rule, the combination of competence, persistence, enthusiasm and business acumen, as well as the ability to prove one’s worth, are required to get the desired position.

Emiritization in the UAE: Taking Over Public and Private Sectors

The UAE did not escape the process of business development, as well as the introduction of female leaders into business field. However, the given process is rather slackened in the UAE due to the cultural specifics of the state.

Instead, the process of emiratization is currently taking place in the state. Emiratization is usually defined as the government initiative to employ the residents of the UAE into public and private sector.

According to the recent estimations, the process of employing people into private sector should be boosted considerably, since the positions in public services have been oversaturated with national workforce.

However, due to the control of the private sector by immigrants, the process might be quite lengthy.

Women in Leadership Positions: Progress and Commentaries

As it has been stated above, it follows from the interview that even in the UAE, where the traditions and the idea of a man as a breadwinner have been quite persistent for years, women have finally started taking leadership positions since recently.

However, in the UA, as well as in the rest of the world, the instances of chauvinism in the workplace are spotted quite often, which means that further changes must be inflicted onto business sector.

Recommendations on Becoming a Leader: The Art of Setting an Example

As it can be deduced from the interview conducted with a woman in charge of a company, there is no book for being a good leader. While training leadership skills is important, it is also necessary to be inspired about making a company successful.

A true leader must provide not only economical and financial planning, but also an example for every single member of the company to follow.

Indeed, as long as the company leader makes it clear that the established rules work for everyone and not only for the staff, the latter will most likely follow the provided behavior model.

By combining the charismatic leadership approach with the transformational one, the head of a company will doubtlessly succeed in leading his/her organization towards triumph.