Increasing women execs open up way for superior leadership

NEW DELHI: Increasing presence of women in corporate space is paving the way for superior leadership roles with companies saying the fairer sex was more risk-aversive and focused on long-term interests than their male peers, says a survey by global consultancy KPMG.

According to the survey conducted in partnership with 'Forum for Women in Leadership' (WILL Forum), companies have agreed that women bring substantive diversity to company boards in terms of their composition, skill sets and experiences.

The findings indicate a higher degree of persuasiveness exists among women executives in their willingness to take risks. These characteristics augur well in accelerating pace of development of corporate strategies and provide firms with a shield against unforeseen events, it added.

"Women have time and again proved to be effective crisis management leaders. Women are more risk-aversive and also focus more on long-term interests than do their male counterparts," the report said.

"The survey and its findings suggest that corporate India seems to be working on traditional definition of hierarchical, conservative form of leadership, but Indian women professionals are definitely on rise and are paving the way for future generations," Forum for Women in Leadership Founder Convener Poonam Barua said.

However, about 85 per cent respondents stated that the existence of gender stereotypes was a barrier for women executives to break through to reveal their true leadership potential, the survey revealed.

"Many aspiring contenders are especially reaping benefits of inclusion programs with specific women-centric initiatives that many organisations are embarking on. However, incongruent life cycle stages that women invariably go through do make their journey in the professional world both unique and challenging," Barua added.

Further, a whopping 87 per cent of respondents agreed that striking a judicious balance between corporate life and family life was a predominant challenge that women management contenders are confronted with, the KPMG survey said.

In addition, about 91 per cent of the top management people surveyed felt that mentoring and training would play a prolific role in developing and fine-tuning leadership skills.

While 63 per cent contended that effective leadership did not depend on the number of years of work experience that a leader had, it added.

The survey roped in 104 men and women who were under the ambit of 'top management' in both public and private sector enterprises across different disciplines and sectors ranging from domains like IT/ITeS, hospitality, financial services and advertising to pharma and manufacturing among others.

The proportion of women respondents was higher (at 66.3 per cent) than that of the men.