Mother Teresa

Numerous articles I have read say, "How can one woman do all of this greatness?" To me, this shows how people can easily create sterotypes that women are not capable of of achieving what Mother Teresa did. She is among the most facisnating and highly respected women in the 20th century. Mother Teresa was devoted to saving lives through sheer determination. The qualities shown through her leadership styles are just shocking. There are not many other women who have achieved such things. She did this through passion and focus. When Mother Teresa was 79 years old she was told by doctors to take it easy because of her heart condition. She explained that what was the utmost importance was not her health, it was taking care of what she had started and making sure she did all she could to save people's lives. Mother Teresa was anexceptional leader who exhibited charisma and could inspire people on her team to motivate their self-interests to achieve the visioin. Following her actions, women in the workforce should study Mother Teresa's leadership style and begin to develop their own style to help shatter the glass ceiling.

Men Hold 'Vast Majority' of Top Jobs in Media

http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/glass-ceiling-report-men-hold-vast-majority-top-jobs-media-25712

This article talks about how women in the media industry only account for 27% of top media professionals. This is almost half the amount of people in Eastern Europe. There are many reasons that go into this but one interesting aspect that this article brought up is that at the International Women Media Leader's Conference, 75 female executives that will be attending will be voting on a plan to help level the playing field. This is something that many different women in different industries should consider to help women climb the corporate ladder. If the women already in top executive positions took their experiences and advice and created a plan to help other women looking to advance, it might be helpful in giving women ideas and tips as they progress in corporate America. If more women took this approach, women might be more likely to take risks and try and shatter more glass ceilings.

Qualities of Women Leaders

This article focuses on differentiating women leaders and men who lead. It focuses on the characteristics that women leaders posses that some times make them more effective then men.

A year long study by the management consulting firm, Caliper, identifies a number of characteristics that distinguish women leaders from men. It was said that women are more assertive, persuasive and more willing to take risks then men.

Do you think these three findings are true? I think that a lot of the times women are more assertive and persuasive then men but I am not sure that I agree on woman being more willing to take risk then men.

The article also mentions how woman are more flexible and good listeners. They are able to relate to their followers which makes it easier for them to trust and listen to the leaders. Women are able to have others see their point of view because they genuinely understand and care about where others are coming from.

In chapter 9 we learned about charismatic leaders and I think that a lot of women who are successful leaders are charismatic leaders because they are able to get engagement from their followers and they truly care about the follower.

http://womensissues.about.com/od/intheworkplace/a/WomenLeaders.htm

Breaking through the Glass Ceiling

Although the glass ceiling barrier has been making strides over the years, there is still a long way to go until it will be able to be shattered. Currently, the top positions held by women is at a measly 3%. Yes, women have been moving up into higher management spots and such, but there are still too many barriers. Not only barriers that are brought on by men, but women themselves. Some women that may be perfect for these positions do not have the correct way of advertising their skills properly. Credibility is extremely hard to gain, especially for women. Some suggestions for shattering the glass ceiling could be to put women, credible or not, into decision making roles. From their they will learn the necessary steps to being a higher-up, and can gain credibility from hands on training and guidance. There are too many creative women to leave out half of the population and only have men in top management positions. By giving women a chance to make decisions, they will get more comfortable and are likely to accept these positions without hesitation.

What can businesses do to help shatter the glass ceiling?

Although there are several reasons to blame why there are not as many women in higher executive positions in the business world or why women make on average around $4,000 less then men with the same qualifications in their first job after receiving their MBA, what can business do to help women succeed? Well this article talks about some of their options.

1. Businesses should install a checks and balance system to weed out any unconscious bias that may be going on in the organization.
2. Try involving more women as board directors. It is proven that women outperform men in senior management when there are more women involved in top executives.

There are several things that a successful woman should be aware of if she is trying to climb up the corporate ladder. Some of these include doing more negotiating, be open to ideas but take control of situations, but also not try to mimic the decision styles that men do to avoid stereotypes but do what you feel is right. However, there are more things that the organizations can do to ensure that women are able to climb the ladder more easily.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-04-15-column15_ST1_N.htm

Irene Rosenfeld CEO of Kraft Foods

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/movers_and_shakers/article6999118.ece This article is a great example of what chapter 13 women and leadership tries to explain which is Women can be just as effective of a leader as a man. The only difference that chapter 13 makes between male and female leadership is that women tend to have a more democratic or participative leadership style then men. This article shows that Irene was able to be a great leader and go head to head with Warren Buffet over the acquisition Kraft wanted to make of Cadbury. Buffet is Kraft's biggest shareholder and felt that the acquisition was not the right thing for the company, but Irene felt that the acquisition was the best for the company and so she went ahead and did it even though it was very expensive for Kraft. Even in the face of disagreement Irene was able to make the right decision for Kraft and lead her company to further success.

The rise and fall of Carly Fiorina

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/09/scitech/pcanswer/main672809.shtml This article talks about the type of leader Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP, was. Carly became CEO of the company at a time when the business was declining, but her attempts to strengthen the company failed and upset many employees and coworkers. After reading this article I would classify Carly's leadership style as an S1 directing style on the situation leadership II grid. A directing style of leadership is characterized by a leader who focuses on communicating goal achievement and spends smaller amounts of time using supportive behavior. This type of leadership style should be used when employees are low in competence and high in commitment. I do not necessarily think the HP employees fit this development level which is probably why Carly's directing style failed. I came to the conclusion that Carly had an S1 directing leadership style because of how she went about the merger with Compaq. Even though many of her employees and stockholders were against the idea she still went ahead with the merger anyway, which shows that she was focused on goal achievement and not on supporting her staff. Another reason I would categorize Carly as and S1 directing leadership style is because of how she strayed away from the tradition of HP and instead tried to compete with Dell's low cost commodity business and IBM's high end high cost consulting and customer service business. This again shows that she was very goal oriented and did not seem to show support for HP and their tradition of doing what they were good at instead of changing the company to compete with their competitors. I think Carly may have taken this approach as a CEO at HP because she came in to the company as an outsider. Before becoming CEO she has never worked at the company before. I think because of her lack of experience with the company she felt she had to come in strong and show her employees and stake holders that she could be directive and powerful. Unfortunately, this approach was unsuccessful and Carly was ousted from the company. Angela Pitzo