Breaking structural barriers: How women leaders are rewriting rules of leadership

Technology is making businesses sometimes, lose the human touch. As the workplace and workforce evolve, companies are painstakingly working towards an increasingly culturally and gender diverse workforce. Leaders need to work harder towards building a team that can perform. Ultimately, the best companies want a diversified team that can be unified in performance.

During the roundtable conversation at Reimagining LeadHERship, in association with The Economic Times, senior women leaders from across industries examined the shift in the workforce and what it means for organisational performance, talent management, and long-term value creation. What emerged after the detailed conversation was that inclusive leadership models are driven by clarity, backed by systems, and rooted in trust. These are essential to building productive, resilient teams that can thrive in today’s business environment.

Women leaders elaborated with examples how women in leadership positions help make work inclusive and collaborative, without resorting to the regular practice of command and control. With a collaborative approach, the strength comes from the team that performs for the leader. Passing on the value that collaboration and teamwork bring about could empower the women of tomorrow the most.


Setting leadership standards

Salesforce’s Arundhati Bhattacharya narrated the example of a former Chief Credit Officer (CCO) in State Bank of India, a woman, who believed in soaking in the issues if the rough edges had to be addressed. The woman officer, unlike some of her former peers, would work with the team and give lessons on what could make the proposal shine. The male officers, often as regular practice, gave orders, while the way the woman officer worked was to help the team learn, helping them learn in the process. The collaborative effort of the officer was so effective that several former colleagues still reach out to her, well after she’s retired, to understand her perspective while trying to resolve an issue.

It may not be limited to collaboration. As enterprises embrace diversity of culture and gender, being a role model to ensure teamwork and output is critical for businesses today. Colgate’s Prabha Narasimhan narrated the typical modus operandi of her first boss. “She would have you in the room, she would set really high standards. If you didn’t meet that standard, she would chew you out,” she recalled. Yet, once they were done with the conversation, she would continue to be the best of friends with the team. The ability to distinguish between task conflicts and relationship conflicts was wonderfully handled by her, she pointed out. “If we want more women to rise, we have to create the conditions for them to rise,” Amisha Vora of PL Capital highlighted, buttressing the systemic changes that need to be undertaken for the change to become systemic.

So, should the leader, particularly a woman, know it all? Neha Agarwal of JM Financial Institutional Securities explained that it may not always be the right thing. If the woman leader is able to collaborate with the team to deliver the desired result, evaluating a business situation in great detail without being a control freak can help the team emerge victorious.

The skill of multitasking

Women also excel as decision enablers, rather than as decision makers at different points in time. Over hundreds of years, women have been listeners and can identify and interpret signals that may not be noticeable to others. The ability for women to multitask works as a major advantage, helping them handle tough situations. The multitasking skill enables women to have a greater influence beyond their teams, spreading within the ecosystem and adding value to both the individual and the enterprise.

While individual behaviour matters, speakers highlighted the structural enablers that could allow women to lead effectively. These include progressive maternity and paternity policies, mentorship ecosystems, and flexible work models that reflect real-life complexities, not idealised ones.
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