Women must overcome their upbringing to become thought leaders

By Mindy Gibbins-Klein, Managing Director, Ecademy Press

When it comes to standing up and being noticed, it’s a well-known fact that women face a greater challenge than men. If you take a moment to consider how many well-recognised thought leaders you can think of, it is more likely that most of them will be men that spring to mind. Even though there are some excellent female thought leaders out there, it seems that there are still not as many compared to the number of men.

Being remembered is the key to being a successful thought leader. It is perhaps down to the fact that women are generally brought up to not boast about themselves and to play down their strengths that they do not excel in this regard. This does not serve them well when competing in a business environment, especially with outspoken men who, at times, play up their strengths.

Maybe this is why there are more male thought leaders: men tend to be better at promoting themselves, while women tend to be more reserved.

Despite some recent reports that have suggested it may take up to 60 years for women to have an equal presence in big businesses, and that a quarter of all FTSE 100 companies have no women at all in top positions, there are still some positive changes occurring.

It seems that a gender rebalance is happening, which is evident in the growing number of women coming into politics, as well as more women than ever starting their own businesses and joining executive boards. But there is still some way to go.

Business leaders need to be able to share experiences and knowledge and, more importantly, be able to share their wisdom and views on key issues within the market if they are to rise above their competition. Some people try to rely on blogging, articles, web and video content and live speaking. However, a good quality full-length book in print trumps all of those and is the most powerful tool to build credibility and raise your profile.

Women are supposedly better communicators, so we would expect them to be writing and speaking a lot more than they do. Women business leaders certainly have as much knowledge and wisdom as their male counterparts. But because of cultural differences between men and women, it seems that women don’t always take that next step to share their knowledge more widely.

Tactics for women leaders

My advice for any budding female thought leader would be to get yourself out there and become known for your thought leadership skills.

When you write and publish your own articles, books and blogs, you put a stake in the ground, showing your market where you stand on important issues. This can seem scary, but what you are actually doing is helping them put a face to the name of your company and its services and, as we all know, people buy people.

Most importantly, you show your customers that you have thought through key topics and can articulate your leadership on these topics in a way  that can influence and guide people to  a better level of understanding.

Without this communication, people don’t know what value you provide and they only hear from bolder people who are willing to shout about their ideas. When women write and publish good articles and books, they show that they are real thought leaders in this space.

I would in fact go as far as to say that as long as women continue to write their ideas down they will start to be remembered more frequently. By writing about their ideas and expressing their thought leadership values, people are more likely to remember the message. They will read about you in their own time and may make further enquiries.

Women have the potential to rise to the top very quickly, but they will have to be prepared to fight off some tough competition. Women will have their work cut out, as they’ve got a lot of ground to cover to get up to the same representation as men – and they’ll have to work twice as hard to prove they’re up to the job.

 mindy@bookmidwife.com