Leadership training is critical to helping women with limiting beliefs and inner voices which need to be worked upon

It’s a common thought that women-only training focused on gender-specific challenges undermines equality because it divides problems by gender. But it’s important to acknowledge that leadership training is critical to helping women, there are specific traits distinct to both men and women. A shortage of female confidence is not a myth it’s quantified, researched, and documented.

Proven differences between the female and male brains. Gender-neutral leadership training is critical to helping women, who often overlook the fact that men and women have different leadership styles because they are based on different thought processes. It’s about time we acknowledge those differences. Leadership development for women must make women leaders aware of the high-impact behaviors they need to practice and how that might translate into action in their particular context. 

Women who aspire to leadership training are critical to helping women as they face unique challenges in today’s companies. They are passed over for key opportunities, paid less than their male colleagues, and left out of critical networks. Therefore, women’s leadership development programs must focus on enabling women to:

Identifying the key skills necessary to advance in the workplace and start your career aspirations clearly:

Women are often second-guessing themselves when it comes to putting themselves forward for opportunities in high-visibility assignments and projects. Research shows that even if a woman believes that she has most of the skills and experience for a role, she’ll focus on what she lacks. Women tend to think that their performance will speak for itself, they’re surprised that they’re not selected for new opportunities, yet often they never let people know they were interested in those roles.

Practicing high-impact behavior that will move women into leadership positions:

This is the meat of leadership training critical to helping women develop programs – coaching them to identify and practice high-impact behaviors that will move them into leadership positions.

This is even more likely if they’re ready with workable solutions to the other person’s possible objections. When expecting that they will meet resistance, it will be prepared with turns in mind when entering a discussion or negotiation. A key behavior therefore to develop for women leaders is to learn to anticipate pushback/resistance and have some turns in mind to keep the negotiation going your way.

Women under-invest in intentionally growing and accessing networks, even though they may be great at building relationships with a wide variety of people. A vital part of leadership training critical to helping women’s development program is teaching women to identify and map their networks and think strategically about how they can use their networks to expand their influence.

Removing limiting mindsets that can keep them from achieving their potential:

The greatest factor undermining women’s growth as leaders can be the limiting mindsets they operate with. Leadership training critical to helping women in the development and coaching women leaders can be especially beneficial in making women leaders aware of their inner voice and finding ways to turn unhelpful voices into supportive ones. The common limiting beliefs and inner voices which need to be worked upon include.

The most important thing women can do for their success is to prioritize their mental, emotional and physical health. Leadership development for women which does not address this very fundamental mindset shift can often fall flat – it can teach women the bells and whistles of leadership like decision making, delegating, and managing one’s time, but without seeding an inner belief that ‘my needs and choices matter’, they will not enable sustainable leadership development of women leaders.

 Leadership coaching can help women leaders assert their ambitions more powerfully and also make a strong case for why they should be given complex and challenging responsibilities because they have the necessary skills and mindsets.