Women in Leadership: Adopting Effective Leadership Styles - Essay Sample

Introduction

Leadership is the ability to influence, guide, and direct people in an organization to achieve set goals effectively and efficiently—thesis statement: Problems that are most likely experienced by women in leadership. The thesis aims at investigating leadership styles adopted by women, what they intend to do to improve on leadership, and how they work with colleagues of a different gender.

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The paper tackles two main research questions stated below;

1. Are women in a position to face leadership challenges?
2. Are family roles a barrier to women's leadership?

It is quite unfortunate that men in almost all sectors have dominated leadership roles in the recent past since men possess most of the leadership skills and can sustain the growth of an organization (Smirles et al., 2020). To a greater extent, women have come out boldly to fight for leadership. As much as women can exercise leadership, they are coupled with challenges that hamper their performance at workplaces.

Men have been able to use their power and status in leadership and are also result-oriented. Women rarely exercise power and status due to fear of how other members would perceive it and their reaction towards the same. Even those who are born leaders have not always been able to be modified by the environment, time, and situation due to lack of commitment and endurance to challenges emanating from within their environment (Storey, 2019).

The success of an organization entirely depends on the leadership style. It is also very essential for leaders to predict and oversee the future perspective because leadership does not only depend on the past and present situation analysis, but also it highly depends upon the future. Women tend to dwell so much on past and current situations affecting their leadership, unlike men whose focus is in the future. Women should also embrace effective communication so that their followers have a clear idea of what is to be achieved so that everyone works towards achieving the same goal (Smirles et al., 2020).

Recent research about women in leadership has revealed that combining a career with family roles and dealing with unfair treatment at the workplace is a challenge to majorly of women who are not able to cope well with such challenges (Storey, 2019). Most women fear multi-tasking skills, which are effective juggle work and have responsibilities. Some have even deliberately resigned from leadership responsibilities because of too much demanded from leadership proving to others who would wish to ascend to such a role to think that leadership only for men.

Women are also challenged in that they are affectionate, kind, helpful, sympathetic, and interpersonally sensitive and gentle, which makes them so much vulnerable in leadership that require those who are assertive, controlling, and confidence while undertaking their duties. All these behaviors result from the fact that women are so much used to family roles, which demand that they remain kind, helpful, and gentle to keep their families intact (Smirles et al., 2020).

Conclusion

To conclude, the research questions examined in the study above form a comprehensive story concerning women in leadership when linked together. Women's personalities either enable or hinder them from overcoming the stereotype threats and challenges they are likely to face in the positions of leadership to perform effectively in their leadership roles (Hoyt & Murphy, 2016). Therefore, being aware of the challenges that women are likely to face in leadership positions enable them to prepare themselves emotionally and mentally to overcome such challenges and become effective leaders.

References

Hoyt, C. L., & Murphy, S. E. (2016). Managing to clear the air: Stereotype threat, women, and leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 387-399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.11.002

Smirles, K. E. S., Basile, K. A., Aughenbaugh, A., Nasser, S., Logue, S., & Arteaga, L. (2020, May). Japanese women's perceptions of gender roles and leadership and the effects of a Women & Leadership Course: A qualitative analysis. In Women's Studies International Forum (Vol. 80, p. 102359). Pergamon. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2020.102359

Storey, J. (2019). Bumping into the Glass Ceiling: Exploring Women's Experiences Seeking Positional Leadership Roles within the Student Affairs Profession in South Africa. Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, 11(Winter), 192-195. https://www.ojed.org/index.php/jcihe/article/view/1547