Written by: Jody Kennett, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
When it comes to competence with what women do, they always excel so the problem of not experiencing growth in your business, career, or income cannot be found in the mastery of your profession, but rather in the subtle, yet powerful women’s leadership skills we need to take ourselves to the next level. Two of these leadership skills for women are confidence and communication and you may have heard the expression that women always have the competence, but they may not have the confidence or be able to communicate their capability to others. I am going to be sharing more about these and the top 10 women’s leadership skills that elevate women in advancing their business and career.
If we do not have confidence in ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to? Even if we do have the competence and confidence, if we cannot communicate this unabashedly to others, we are stunting our own advancement in our business, as a female career leader, or most importantly, with our income.
Confidence and communication are only two of many women’s leadership skills that empower women to propel themselves forward not just into a leadership role in their industry, but also to experience financial growth. I am going to share 10 of the top women’s leadership skills that elevate women to accelerate and advance themselves in their professional domain as an entrepreneur or career women leader.
The reason these are so important is that we already know you are great at what you do, but if this is hidden, on mute, humbled or held back in anyway, it will limit what is possible for you and opportunities for growth. Not to mention, anyone of these can add zero’s to your paycheque and when you succeed you pave the path for all of us to know it can be done and that we can do it too.
The Top 10 Leadership Skills that Elevate Women in Business to Advance, Grow, and Succeed
1. Leadership Ownership: What does leadership ownership mean? So glad you asked because this is the first and most crucial step for any women in business who wants to rise as a leader in her industry or company. You need to own the title of a leader which absolutely means you have to see yourself as a leader even if you have never been one before or are not there yet in acknowledgement or recognition. Having leadership ownership also has to do with you knowing your worth and that you are deserving of the leadership space. Leadership ownership has to do with your identity and you seeing what is possible for you and knowing what your potential is, but it also has to do with your own perception or shall I say conditioned ideas of how a leader is suppose to be. It is also about stepping into and owning your space as a leader. You need to claim your right to lead, that you can and are leading, and that your leadership is as valuable as anyone else. Result: When you have leadership ownership, you step more fully into the role of leading and when you are a leader in your career or business, this shows your value and potential, it gives you visibility and a voice, and all of these promote you and elevate your growth. 2. Leadership Confidence: Being confident as a leader is one of the top challenges and requests I hear from women leaders. Can you relate? In a way, this is often an ironic situation because many women are already in a leadership role which means they have been given the authority to lead or recognized for what they do, their capabilities, and who they are in their profession. It also could mean that maybe you stepped into the leadership space in your business, but for some reason whether you have the title or are claiming leadership, women struggle with feeling confident as a leader, at least in the initial stages of their growth.
Confidence comes from a few different sources, but the strongest confidence comes from within, not any source external to us. That means to have leadership confidence, we need to build it from the inside out and if your confidence has been holding you back, this is the first place you want to begin. Work with a confidence coach or receive some CBC coaching to transform any limiting beliefs that could be preventing you from stepping fully into your greatness. Result: When you feel confident, people see and feel that and therefore they have confidence in you. This can translate into sales, into promotions, and even influence where you gain loyal team members or followers. An audience or colleagues are attracted by confidence and this means that they are inspired by, want, and need your leadership.
3. Leadership Communication: Learning how to communicate as a leader and developing specific communication skills cannot only make your life less stressful, but it can empower you to lead people, facilitate meetings and conflict, and promote yourself. Some of the specific leadership communication skills that are important for women leaders are: direct communication, presentation skills, specific language to use and avoid, and boundary setting. Result: When women refine their already powerful strength of being great communicators with the small refinements of leadership communication, it enables them to speak with ease and skill which creates clarity, direction, and confidence.
4. Leadership Presence: Leadership presence is all about the energy you exude through your personal presence and the magnetism it creates in those exposed to you. Presence is comprised of how you hold yourself in posture and presentation, how you feel about yourself, and the energy you are exuding in any given situation which is often comprised of what you think and believe. It is also linked to your ability to own who you are and the space you occupy, your strengths, talent, and value and the ability to communicate this to others through your own body, mind, emotion, and energy. Result: When you have a powerful presence, it can land you a job by presenting yourself successfully in an interview, it can lead to gaining new contracts or clients in your business, and all round be magnetic energy that attracts people, opportunities and growth to you. 5. Assertiveness Skills: Every woman building her business or career needs to develop assertiveness skills and these will not only benefit us professionally, but they will also serve us personally as well. Being a women who has the skill to be assertive means that you have the ability to assert your needs, wants, opinion, boundaries, and ask for what you deserve in any situation. Assertiveness can mean the difference between accepting what is given to you and asking for more; it can also mean the strength to speak and give a voice to your expectations so you do not settle, but ask for more. Those who ask for more, often get more. Perhaps the most powerful and life-changing aspect to gaining assertiveness skills is asserting what type of behavior you will and will not accept in both your personal and professional life and having the courage to speak or demand this in high stake moments. Result: When women have assertiveness skills, they: experience less stress in challenging circumstances, are able to ask for what they want, speak their mind, and define clear boundaries around what is and is not acceptable for them. This often leads to women setting higher expectations for themselves and getting what they ask for so they never settle or accept what is beneath them.
6. Voice and Visibility:
Yes, building and leaning into using your voice and being seen with greater visibility can be scary, but it absolutely, undoubtedly will grow your business and career. Do you shy away from speaking or being seen to blend in and never risk being judged? How is that working for your business and career growth goals? The better question is to ask, what results would you get if you played a bigger game and began gradually and courageously voicing your opinion and leadership and stepped into more visibility? First off, you would gain a lot of confidence and it would become easier and easier, but secondly others now get to experience all you have to offer and this opens up a lot more opportunity for you. Results: Try for one week focusing on either using your voice more or having greater visibility and then document some of the immediate responses and outcomes you see from this. Over a consistent, longer period of time, using your voice more and being seen builds a momentum that will catapult your career and launch you into the next level of business growth.
7. Emotional Resilience Up until now we have been talking about women’s leadership skills that will accelerate and progress you from where you are and now we come to emotional resilience which is one skill that will help us take the breaks off of what may be preventing us from moving forward. Being emotionally resilient is something that will help us manage the stresses we will undoubtedly face in today’s work world. It will also limit the impact any negative experiences may have on us.
Often it can be easy to let our emotions knock us out of our game and they may even stop our momentum. However, if we can learn to not avoid negative emotions and to allow ourselves to feel them, but also navigate these in a healthy way where we move through them quicker so we can return to our brilliance, then we will be unstoppable.
We are human and emotions are a part of the human experience, but it is when emotions overwhelm us or send us into a negative spiral that we cannot perform at our peak.
Developing a new relationship with your emotions and a new pattern that allows you to live with them, process them, and carry on with fortitude, this is what will be the game-changer that never again impedes your growth.
Result: Emotional resilience will help every person, let alone every woman, bounce back after failures, conflict, disappointments, and even loss or grief. Resilience is an agility and return to an emotional state that will allow you to be optimized so you can continue to move forward, show up, and be at your best.
8. Conflict Mastery I have come to learn being both a leadership and communication coach, that whether you are a man, women or even animal, no species likes or invites conflict. Yes, there are those rare human beings like lawyers or people who love to challenge, that swing the doors of conflict wide open because they thrive on it, but those are few and far between. Most of us run for the hills or we simply do not know how to deal with it.
The great thing here is, if you learn the communication skills to navigate conflict, you will never again avoid a situation that needs to be dealt with immediately. In fact, mastering the art of dealing with conflict, will communicate your leadership ability and it empowers you to be an active solution creator that can work with people and ensure everyone’s needs are met.
One of the most valuable aspects to learning how to master conflict is that you will never walk away from or avoid addressing an issue that leaves you at a disadvantage. It gives you the ability to speak up for yourself and stand up for your worth or what you deserve.
Result: Often we see conflict as scary and it can definitely create strong emotions in all of us; however, when we learn how to handle conflict, we can see it is about two or more people competing for different needs or having opposing opinions. By gaining the communication skills to facilitate a conflict forward for progress to the best possible outcome, we are empowered to take action, have a voice, and lead it to a desirable outcome.
9. Negotiation Skills:
This is an arena that we must play in and have fun with, but that can only be learned by stepping into the so called boxing ring and preparing for what it is we are fighting for in any given moment. Negotiation skills help entrepreneurs secure savings or profit in their business and it helps career women receive higher salaries or a promotion.
Getting comfortable with negotiating and showing the value you bring to the table is a part of business and career building. Thinking of negotiation as a part of business rather than a stressful situation can take the emotion out of it and make it more of a standard procedure.
You need to know your worth, know what the customer or employer is willing to pay, how you add value and how this is going to benefit either their ROI or solve their problem. It is not only a skill, but an art and if we see it as a dance with a partner, we will always work with our partner to create something great.
Lead it and go with the flow. Every negotiation does not secure a win, but it is a form of self-respect, acknowledgement of worth, and a demonstration of both your confidence and courage to ask for what you deserve. Result: The result of gaining negotiating skills is simple and that is being paid what you are worth and someone recognizing the value you bring while also having the funds to honor the value you will bring to them.
10. Self Care / Self Compassion / Self Love
Although self-care and self-compassion is last on the list, it is by far not the least important because it fuels and is the precursor of all other successes you will have in your business and career. These three powerhouses of actions and ways of being lay the foundation for you to thrive in all you do not just in your career, but also in your life. As business and career women, if we do not have a self-care routine and forget to prioritize it, we may lead ourselves right into burnout, injury, or illness. If we do not practice self-compassion, we are less resilient and it could lead to unhappiness or limitations in our career growth. And if self-love is something we struggle with, it may block all of the following: abundance in our life, inviting love in, and sharing ourselves and our gifts with the world. However, if we do have self-love, it exudes energy and an invitation for many possibilities to unfold in our life, career, and business. We not only become resilient with these three attributes but we also model leadership that all women need to embrace for themselves because when we do, it is the ultimate source that sets us free to soar to all we can and are meant to be in this world.
Result: Unlimited potential and possibilities and feeling great physically, mentally, and emotionally. This enables you to share your brilliance and leadership with others for impact.
I believe that as women we all have the competence where we specialize in our career or business so that is never what holds us back. Rather, it is the small, refined skills and tweaks we can make in the area of women’s leadership presented here, that have the potential to catapult our career. When we build our leadership, we lead the growth of our business and advance our career which ultimately increases our income.
I have coached many women and none of the women who have come to me for their business and career growth has ever needed coaching to be better at what they do; it has always been around these women’s leadership skills or for entrepreneurs, it is sometimes on how to build their business and market themselves.
Even for these entrepreneurs who want growth and need to market themselves, they can all learn how to do tactical business building and marketing skills. What is often harder is having the confidence to be visible, have a voice, own their leadership space, have a powerful presence, and communicate confidently so they can promote themselves while also assertively asking for the sale.
Choose one skill here to focus on and decide upon one behavior or action you will take consistently for a month and see where it will take you. If you want to develop your women’s leadership skills, this is the exact work I do with women entrepreneurs and career leaders so reach out and we will get started in elevating you to your next breakthrough.
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Read more from Jody!
Jody Kennett, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jody Kennett elevates leaders with leadership, communication, and peak energy performance as an ICF-certified coach. She is impacting women in business globally and empowering them to own their power as a leader by combining women's leadership, confidence, and communication coaching. Her specialized training as a certified C-IQ (Conversational Intelligence) coach is transforming conversations, communication, and culture to foster positive relationships and a thriving workplace. As a co-author of The Winning Mindset book, she is inspiring and training people to master their inner-leader and mindset so they can have peak performance. She created Peak Energy 4 Performance to highlight the importance of energy input into not only our bodies, but also our mind, emotions, and environment. Jody is uniquely certified as leadership, life, and health coach bringing 20 years of health and wellbeing expertise to energize leaders and entrepreneurs. She is the coach who will help you 'Lead Your Life', career, and business so you will, 'Lead it, Live it, and Love it!'
