4 keys to success for women leaders

Highly successful women leaders often approach their careers and their lives by embracing 4 keys to success.

Agency

“Agency” refers to intentional actions taken toward achieving a desired goal. Agency is about taking control of your career, being your own pilot, and feeling as if you’re shaping your job, your leadership style, and your life. Strategies are like analyzing your career steps and living with intention, both at work and at home; asking for challenges outside your current functional orientation to broaden your experience and perspective; intentionally cultivating your leadership brand; defining boundaries to help you manage competing responsibilities and seeking out the types of support needed for the work-life juggle; and setting goals that align with your values, and developing a plan for achieving them.

Authenticity

Authenticity is being genuine, and being yourself. Authenticity comes from finding your own style, your way of leading. By developing self-awareness, you gain clarity about your values, behaviors, preferences, and skills. You can then determine the gap between “fitting in” and being yourself. To increase your self-awareness, seek feedback to better understand your own strengths and weaknesses, and to understand the impact you have on others. Evaluate how your needs, motivations, and goals change over time, and continue to reassess what’s of value to you. Look for patterns, but be open to possibilities.

Connection

Connection involves a focus on relationships. A desire for closer friendships and family ties drove many of the goals, choices, and decisions of the women leaders. Even the busiest executives invest in connections, both personally and professionally. To strengthen your professional connections slow down and take time for people, build relationships, and network, network, network.

Wholeness

Wholeness represents the desire to seek roles beyond work or to unite different life roles into an integrated whole. Women leaders value multiple roles, life beyond work, and a broader definition of success. Wholeness is about setting priorities and valuing all your commitments. It’s about setting boundaries and saying no to roles or obligations that no longer serve you.

_{Original article: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/five-key-themes-for-high-achieving-women-leaders/}

_{Fotó: határtalanKÉPzelet – Veres Anita Photography}