Even though I have never been the most extroverted person, I find this useful when it comes to leadership and how I like to lead. Last year, I was named Junior Co-Captain of my lacrosse team. Although I was not the senior captain, I had the responsibility of helping the underclassmen and the first-year players learn the intricacies and general rules of lacrosse. Although not the most vocal of the captains, I found it effective to consult and lead in a reticent manner especially because many of the new players found it intimidating to speak to the senior captains. When one of my teammates has a question during a drill or activity, it is important they feel comfortable reaching out to a role-model and leader who can help. While many people might be completely comfortable talking to the accomplished and unreserved senior …show more content…
captains, it is important that those who aren’t quite comfortable yet have a leader who they can talk to.
Next season, I plan to use these experiences of one-on-one and introverted leadership as well as branching out and speaking up, to lead my teammates collectively and help us all become better players.
This past summer, I was given the incredible opportunity to attend a summer program at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business with a group of other young women who want to advance the role of women in business. The Gannon Center for Women and Leadership is the perfect place for young women like myself who feel as though the dialogue surrounding women’s rights and their ability to lead is very pertinent and important to continue. As a woman who is interested in business, it is clear that the “glass ceiling” is cracking, but has not yet been shattered. Women today have excelled in virtually every field from academics to business and philanthropy. They have become presidents of universities and chairs in Fortune 500 boardrooms. As doctors, lawyers, owners of businesses, and professional athletes as well as politicians, we see many successful and powerful women who make a very positive impact on society. This inspires me in countless
ways to believe I can not only make a good living for myself and eventual family, but that I can also help empower others around me along the way. Another reason the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership speaks to me and reflects my own interests is their promise statement. Growing up, and even to this day as I continue growing and learning, I’ve relied on strong female role models to guide me in becoming independent and knowledgeable about women’s issues and struggles. These role models include icons such as Michelle Obama and Serena Williams, as well as women in my personal life such as the mother of a good friend. Each of these women has helped me determine the kind of person and woman I want to be in life. In a speech about the future possibility of a female president in 2012, Michelle Obama has said: “that there is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish, whether that’s in politics or any other field”. By not limiting myself, I will enable myself to do anything I put my mind to in the future. The Gannon Center for Women and Leadership will help me do exactly that; “[prepare] women to lead extraordinary lives.”
Sheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. Sandberg chooses Lean In to examine the reasons for women’s progress being stalled in achieving leadership roles. It provides deep insight into root causes while also offering compelling and commonsense solutions which can empower women to achieve their full potential.
I’ve demonstrated leadership qualities in various ways throughout my time at high school. During the drafting competition, my group needed some confidence and someone there to help guide them to victory, and I was there to help them. A group works together, but sometimes you need a leader. This leader will help facilitate and get the group to do what they’re supposed to do. I think I helped ease off their nerves and I told them to relax and do how we practiced. This paid off because we placed first place and each of us
Being a leader is no simple task. During my Eagle Scout project, I lead a range of people, from adults to youth. It was my job to make sure everyone was working and, that everyone was capable of doing their task. I had many issues doing this throughout my project because I am only one person and I can’t be everywhere at once. Thusly made being a leader a drudgery. But I had an incredible set of adults guiding me along the way, who taught me that being a leader was not doing everything myself, being a leader
In February 2015, Ellen Pao’s lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm, for gender discrimination went on trial. Pao alleged that she had been treated unfairly by her ex-bosses and passed on numerous times for promotion in favor of her male counterparts. While Pao did not win her lawsuit, the trial brought back to light the problem of gender discrimination and of the glass ceiling in corporate America. Since women started to enter the workforce, there always have been barriers and obstacles that prevented them from reaching the higher ranks on the corporate ladder. Public recognition that there was indeed a problem of discrimination helped giving women assurance
In the American society, we constantly hear people make sure they say that a chief executive officer, a racecar driver, or an astronaut is female when they are so because that is not deemed as stereotypically standard. Sheryl Sandberg is the, dare I say it, female chief operating officer of Facebook while Mark Zuckerberg is the chief executive officer. Notice that the word “female” sounds much more natural in front of an executive position, but you would typically not add male in front of an executive position because it is just implied. The fact that most of America and the world makes this distinction shows that there are too few women leaders. In Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In,” she explains why that is and what can be done to change that by discussing women, work, and the will to lead.
Wilson, Marie C. Closing the Leadership Gap Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World. New York: Viking Adult, 2004. Print
Barbara White, author of Women’s Career Development, gives an opportunity for successful women to give advice to other women wanting to pursue a career in the workforce. First, they explained that women need to be single-minded today. They must make their own choices and know what they want. If a woman hopes to achieve her goal of an ‘American Dream’ and live up to it, then she should be persistent and keep working at achieving her objectives. The best advice given in White’s book is that a woman should not underestimate herself (227-229). A woman today can be whatever she pleases. It takes work, dedication and persistence to achieve goals in general, not just in the career aspect of life. As seen through Joan Crawford and Dawn Steel’s stories, a ‘business woman’ has a bright future now and for years to come. Women’s roles have drastically changed throughout the past century along with the actual number of women now working. It is phenomenal to see such an increase in women’s participation, and hopefully this course will continue even higher into the twenty-first century.
As a college basketball player, I learned that being an effective leader did not mean that I had to be a constant bundle of energy. Rather, I realized over time it is more important to understand your teammates and what makes them tick, and to translate that knowledge into separate leadership styles to match each individual. This is crucial when working with an extremely diverse group of attitudes, personalities, and mindsets. I believe people would describe my style as steady, positive, and upbeat – opposite of my head coach in many ways. Countless times I would pull a teammate aside who had been berated and explain in a constructive
When you think of a CEO of a company or of world political leaders, do you think of a man or of a woman? Many, if not most of us, see these positions as being held by men. In this essay, I will explain why women are still not equal to men. In the first paragraph I will discuss inequalities that happen in the workplace. The second section will show the differences that occur within the athletic world. Thirdly, I will explain the differences in education and home life. Even though we are approaching the twenty-first century, women in our society are still not equal to men.
It is no surprise that women are not able to take on less feminine jobs due to the lack of resources that are accessible to obtain because men always have a better advantage. In “Research On Women Business Owner: Past Trends, a New Perspective and Future Directions,” Dr. Candida Brush, a Division Chair for Entrepreneurship, states, “Since 1970, the percentage of businesses owned by women has increased from 5 percent to 30 percent” (Brush 1038). The increase in the percentage demonstrates how society has changed by providing women with advantages they did not acquire in previous years. Although it is less likely to be seen, women can currently become a chief executive officer without being judged and even get admired by other wome...
Women working in organizations always experience barriers and obstacles that hinder their development and upward movement at the top positions of the organizations. This article titled ‘Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers’ has been taken from Harvard Business Review written by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb. This article significantly highlights the unseen barriers and the three solutions that will help women to gain a sense of themselves as a leader, be recognized as a leader and succeed towards the top positions.
Today , we can find a great number of business women, who have made their mark in the society by
From the time women started working, they have been facing the challenge of breaking the glass ceiling in order to climb to the top of the corporate hierarchy. Although the glass ceiling is not as prominent as it was in the past, it is still very real, and it affects not only women but other minorities. Whether it is the ceiling, wall, elevator, or cage, the glass prevents women from advancing in their careers. It has existed from the beginning, and even with the help of equality laws, it still poses a problem today. However, thanks to several outstanding women, the glass has developed several cracks; the future appears brighter. It is a challenge, but it is not impossible: Women can break the glass and soar to the top!
I fall into a unique, more introverted and innovative personality type. Generally speaking, leaders are often expected to be extroverts. That seems to be the societal ideal. However, there were some well known introverts such Einstein, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela that obviously were successful leaders and innovators with a mission that suited them. I am motivated to lead if the mission has integrity and is an area of interest to me. Those factors feed my extroverted side. I like to improve systems and processes; one can put specialized projects and problems in front of me or ask me to create a growth opportunity and I will run with it. Our textbook The Art of Leadership by George Manning/Kent Curtis describes the most important traits of leadership as the need for achievement, possessing intelligence, self confidence, initiative, supervisory ability, and decisiveness (Manning). I am an intelligent problem solver and I can see many paths for growth. With right mission I can be very self- confident, I show initiative and supervisory ability. I can sometimes be slow on decisiveness so I try to identify
Women leaders have the crucial soft skills of empathy, innovation, facilitation, and active listening (Masaoka, 2006). They also have first-hand life experiences that bring technical skills and experiences from the street level to the workplace (Masoka, 2006). Women often build stronger relationships with clients and outside contacts than their male counterparts. This relationship building skill, provides a key aspect which helps to move businesses forward (Giber et al., 2009). Fortune 500 companies with a high percentage of women significantly outperformed those with fewer women. Companies with the highest representation of women showed higher returns on equity than those with fewer women employees (Giber et al., 2009). Thus, future organizations may have a higher percentage of female leaders than we have experienced in the past. Future leaders must ensure that there is equality among the workforce and that women are accurately represented among the