1. Leadership Tools for Women
Leadership Development Series
By: C. Ellen Washington, Ph.D. November 19, 2015

2. The Charge for
Women Leaders
 Charge: How to be more effective leaders individually
and collectively as women?
 Process:
 Explore leadership challenges for women
 Discuss strategies and best practices

3. Leadership Challenges One
 Broadening perception of leadership beyond
conventional styles
 How do we achieve in the current landscape?
 How do we evolve the landscape?
 Extra challenges and responsibilities of being
women leaders in today’s workforce
 Managing enthusiasm to promote
women/political correctness vs. readiness for
new positions and responsibilities and
development of the skills to succeed
 How to decide when to take/seek new opportunities

4. Leadership Challenges Two
 How to “feel” like a leader and place oneself within a
professional framework
 “Entitlement” issues
 Role of women leaders in today’s workplace with
respect to furthering the representation and agenda of
women
 Energy management and burnout
 How to encourage employers to invest in
maintenance of good outreach projects vs. seeding
outreach projects
 How to weather transitions successfully (going from
one culture/institution to another)

5. Strategies and Best Practices
 What have you or others done to be an effective leader?
 Learn how to avoid unconscious mistakes
 Learn how to recognize and make the right choices for your
career and life
 Learn how to build your reputation and credentials
 Recognize your strengths and play to them
 Seek proper resources and mentors throughout your career
development

6. Strategies and Best Practices
1
 “Power of rhetoric” If you want things to change,
declare success about it
 Raise visibility by having things be part of the language
 Take time for reflection – leadership by introspection
 Values: learning to be adaptive, flexible, agent for
change

7. Strategies and Best Practices
2
 Be able to articulate your vision in an easily
understood way
 Provides a focus for your leadership
 Get a core group of people working with you
 Buy-in is critical.
 Build on people’s strengths and passions
 Invest people in forwarding your/their agenda

8. Strategies and Best Practices
3
Be willing to lose openly and often
 Accepting loss speaks to integrity and
leadership
Use a group of key people in your life
whose advice you trust
Be willing to change your thinking
To be a leader, you need to be able to get
people to follow
 You need to get people working together and
engaged with a mutual agenda

9. Strategies and Best Practices
4
 People follow leaders with vision
 Vision must be simple, focused and compelling
 Leader must do their homework
 You must be able to sell your vision
 You need to master when to use influence and
when to use power
 You need to know how to use both
 Actions are at least as important as words
 If you think something is important, you need to
demonstrate it to your reports with your priorities, how
you spend your time, etc.

10. Strategies and Best Practices
5
Stay at the table – do not give up on
people or what you believe in
Leaders should listen
 Be obliging in the way you refuse
You have to be respected even if you or
your decisions are not liked
Be a role model for your organization
 Interact with your staff consist in the way you
want the culture to be

11. Strategies and Best Practices
6
Stay at the table – don’t give up on
people or what you believe in
Leaders should listen
 Be obliging in the way you refuse
You have to be respected even if you or
your decisions are not liked
Be a role model for your organization
 Interact with your staff consist in the way you
want the culture to be

12. Strategies and Best Practices
7
 Make sure you are noticed.
 Do not wait to be recognized.
 Do not be afraid to sing your own praises.
 Do not do work for others.
 Do not skip breaks or vacations and work late as a rule.
 Do not act like a girl!
 You want people to see you as a capable leader.
 Do NOT:
 Decorate your office like a living room
 Feed people
 Cry!!!!
 Worry too much about offending people
 Use a nickname

13. Strategies and Best Practices
8
 Understand office politics and use it to your advantage
 Never underestimate a person’s connections.
 Always get back to people.
 Use your intuition.
 Do not take things personally and do not assume you understand a
person’s motivation.
 Office Politics….
 Know your own ethical standards.
 Do not confuse ethics with preferences
 Always weigh the consequences
 Be willing / ready to adjust
 Is the job more important than the issue?

14. Action Items
 Seek out mentors
 Take risks, accept challenges
 Be decisive, demand results
 Read, Read, Read
 Be confident
 Nurture your assets
 Stay true to yourself
 Develop a professional development plan
 Network
 Career Goals

15. Out with the old,
In with the NEW….
 Once upon a time we simply obeyed orders issued by
our superiors, our leaders and managers. Now we
incline more to challenge them, emboldened to do so by
the spread of democracy, by the rhetoric of
empowerment, and by the practice of participation.
The evidence of the decline in respect for authority is
everywhere—and everywhere are leaders who labor to
lead. The change is cultural and contextual. Norms are
now such that followers demand more—and leaders
succumb more often. -Barbara Keller

16. Books to Read
 “Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office”
 By: Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D.
 “If My Career’s on the Fast Track: Where Do I Get a Road Map?”
 By: Anne Fisher
 “The Female Brain”
 By: Louann Brizendine, M.D.
 “What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women
Need to Know ”
 By: Joan C. Williams and Rachel Dempsey
 “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take
Action”
 By: Simon Sinek

17. Questions / Closing Remarks
 Thank you for your time and participation….

18. Contact Information
 C. Ellen Washington, Ph.D.
 Women’s Center, Talley Student Union
Suite 5210 E
Phone: (919) 513.3137
Email: cewashi2@ncsu.edu
Website: http://oied.ncsu.edu/Womens-Center