FEMALE LEADERS IN A GLOBAL WORLD

“My mother would say, ‘with your skills, with your languages, you can become the personal assistant of a CEO’, but she could not quite imagine that I would become the CEO myself.” Flavia (Worldly Women, p.9)

While organizations expand their business across borders; global companies have more new markets, opportunities, economic growth, innovation, and cooperation that require more leaders in the field. There are two remarkable issues, (1) increasing need for global leaders and (2) female professionals as potential global leaders. The number of international roles is rising dramatically, but companies cannot fill these assignments due to the lack of global leaders who can achieve them. The global mobility and diversity in employment are the main triggers behind global leadership need. It should be also underlined that benefits of mixed-gender leadership teams and impending leadership shortage are the basic reasons behind the increasing demand for leadership.

That’s because, multinational corporations should turn their face to women leaders and potential female expatriates. Women leaders are able to fill these positions because women have increasingly important role in the world, and they have more ideal features than males. According to the researches, companies with high share of women leaders in top executive positions are more successful than male dominant companies. Successful female leaders have mutual significant characteristics such as self-awareness, conscious imbalance, operating outside their comfort zone, and active career management. By the way of conclusion, the current skill gaps lead organizations to explore the potential of women leaders by better financial results, more buying power, being more educated workforce, and untapped.

Relevant work: Welsh, Sapna and Caroline Kersten (2013), Worldly Women, I Universe.