A new book, "Women Breaking Through Leadership," by Stefania Lucchetti and Anna Bisazza is dedicated to helping women who want to achieve top leadership positions.
The new leader's personality blueprint that has emerged in the last few years not only drives personal achievement and inspires others to follow, but also nurtures and develops a team spirit through attention to principles and each individual‟s needs, preferences and boundaries. It is developed through the balanced nurturing of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual strength.
At the start of the millennium, Stephen Covey, in his well known reference classic Principle – Centered Leadership, discussed the importance of maintaining a balance among personal, family and professional life. He also advocated living by a principle-centered core in order to unleash the creativity, talent, and energy within ourselves and others needed as a leader, and enjoy a more balanced, more rewarding, more effective life.
Yet, it is very difficult for a woman to move into leadership positions if she doesn‟t have the right support both at home and at work. Organizations are now implementing programs and policies for diversity. However, there is often a form of hypocrisy where those policies are not implemented in practice.
Even though policies are written and good intentions stated, it is still very true that a lot of workplaces simply do not live up to their promises.
Women who have been successful have found a way to create around them a support system, at home and at work, that empowers them, allows flexibility and pushes them to be the best they can – often by choosing carefully which organizations to work in.
Creating supportive environments at home is possibly the most important tool that successful women rely upon. A supportive significant other and family, reliance on quality domestic help and childcare education without guilt can make a huge difference.
So the issue isn‟t so much whether women can have it all, but rather how to integrate with a personality that can make the most of opportunities and in results-oriented, flexible, open-minded environments that leave room for an osmosis and natural flow between work and personal and family commitments.
The goal is for each woman, in her own individual way, to be truly free to contribute her best resources.
Source: Stefania Lucchetti: Women Breaking Through Leadership
John Agno: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women
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