Agility, curiosity top traits in women CXOs

May 23, 2022

Women’s leadership does appear to have a gender impact…the socialisation [sic] of women (predominantly as care-givers, as builders of families & communities and as equitable distributors of resources) often leads to them employing these factors in their leadership model.”

—Avtar Group founder & CEO Saundarya RajeshRajesh

The gist:

The study ‘Leadership models of women’ by EY Global Delivery Services (GDS) and Avtar was conducted on 1,245 women leaders of EY GDS (in Argentina, Poland, China, the Philippines, the UK and India (79%)) to understand the key influencers in their leadership models.”

The research aims at “identifying sustainable career models for women professionals that can be used by them to pursue leadership aspirations.”

According to this study, “women leaders possess greater levels of strategic considering, empathy, agility and being able to hold a team together.”

Jaya Virwani, who leads diversity & inclusiveness and ethics office at EY GDS, noted that there is “limited research on women in leadership, especially from an emerging markets perspective,” but, “the tone has changed “as more women are walking into the workforce.”

Therefore finding models that support women, who support your company, culture and teams, is mission critical.

“It should also be taken into consideration that there is a general difference in the daily behaviour [sic] and expectations of men and women in the workplace, which percolates into different aspects of the workplace including the leadership style.

The genesis of the study says Virwani: “We wanted to study their journey and the practices that have helped them become role models for other women to emulate.”

Connect with the Times of India opinion piece here, and from hers, here.