Women are gradually making their leadership presence felt in entrepreneurship, administration, education, engineering, health, etc. at regional, national, and global levels. Women are now resolved to break the traditional glass ceiling that barred them from entering leadership positions even if they possessed requisite skills and talent to occupy them.

Women are constantly evolving and reaching new milestones across a wide spectrum of human activities in modern times. The world has witnessed the advent of women leaders such as Smriti Irani, Chanda Kochhar, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Apruva Purohit to name a few.

A leader is a person who influences and encourages a group of people to work towards the realization of goals. The hallmark of leadership is the capacity to influence others towards accomplishing goals and towards betterment. “Leadership is the ability of a superior to influence the behaviour of a subordinates or group and persuades them to follow a particular course of action.”

Women leaders are more transformational than men leaders. They function as a role model for their subordinates. They inspire their team and spend a lot of time coaching their team. They care a lot about their personal development. Women leaders emphasize teamwork and authentic communication as a key to success. For most women leaders, leadership is not meant only for accomplishing organizational goals but for transforming their followers into better people.

I think the starting premise here is that women have grown up to be more tentative than men. There is an interesting research done by McKinsey that says that women and men at the same level in middle management can be equally competent and are high potentials yet when they are asked how many of them thought that they could reach the top, just 67% women put up their hands, against 78% men. Women usually think that they are here because of being lucky, or because they had the opportunity some women didn’t have. I think the tentativeness is fueled by the fact that they are looked upon as outliers. This is also due to the fact how women have been brought up. Women are always asked not to talk loudly, don’t shout, don’t scream, men are grown up to be far bigger than their space and women are grown up to be smaller than their space. Due to this uncertainty women have about their worth, they often have to be pushed, but that is not necessarily women mentoring. It could equally be a male mentoring.