Cleopatra, Marie Curie, Indira Gandhi, Angela Merkel, Florence Nightingale, and Margaret Thatcher are only some of the history’s outstanding female leaders. They made progress in politics, social change, and medical innovation despite the male-dominated spheres in which those women flourished.

Feminine insights and mindsets let them achieve their goals, through a few female contemporaries rose as high in society decades and centuries ago. Gender bias was a formidable problem that lessened over time.

Female Leadership is a more acceptable reality today. There are reasons why increasing numbers of women reach such heights.

There’s scientific evidence that women make great leaders for biological and intellectual reasons. Female brains are built to focus on communication, memory, plus emotional and social connections. 

Women Want Everyone Involved

Women tend to create allies who help them to achieve goals, aka shared victories. That’s excellent for the mental health of their minions. Men focus on perception plus counter-productive competitiveness, limiting their odds of being effective authority figures/leaders. They’ll stake out territory, frustrating an employee’s or colleague’s access to information and sabotaging or preventing decision-making roles. The motivation is too often a desire for exclusive, unshared, goal-achieving glory. True leaders, however, foster success from the top down and bottom up of their organizations, guiding grateful people inside and even outside those groups. It’s a feminine mindset. 

Less successful people tend to behave tyrannically, alienating underlings who might consequently sabotage the tyrant’s efforts. Authoritative, power-grabbing figures aren’t genuine leaders. Women rarely fill such roles. Women avoid making enemies or weak yes-men of people.

Members of the female-led organization usually give what they’re able and receive what they need, a sort of Marxism that can’t succeed in too-large groups.

As the article The World’s Most Powerful Women 2019 – Forbes indicates, some women become great leaders by prioritizing staff members and colleagues’ interests rather than alienating stressed-out people with rigid formalities. 

Life Lessons and Ladylike Leadership

Building on the tortuous path they traversed makes some women great leaders. The solution-oriented balancing experience lets them practice making effective decisions, gaining insights into what will or won’t help them achieve goals. Women apply those life lessons to their employment and leadership goals. 

Competition with men fosters inner strengths that help women to persevere instead of collapsing over disappointments or glitches, especially if women must overcome gender bias and blatant sabotage of their efforts by insecure males. That requires resolve. Female leaders in any sphere of life tend to excel at it. That’s how they achieve their objectives.

A maxim indicates that “Women work twice as hard and twice as smart as men to secure half the credit.” Women in minority populations too often must make even more concerted efforts to succeed in the world. Finessing such formidable treks develops and perfects superb leadership skills along the way.

Struggles fill women with insights about similar challenges to be overcome by underlings and colleagues. They take preventative action while solving existing problems, facilitating success- that insight and consequent compassion-in-action nurture a shared sense of commitment to specific goals. Such bonding promotes the ability to foresee and to face problems together.

Underlings feel safe when revealing organizational problems to a pro-active female boss. Everyone realizes that the information must necessarily be shared and will be gratefully accepted. Males might undermine success by making underlings fear angry responses when problems are cited. Underlings find it safer to remain silent. The problems go unaddressed, sometimes undermining progress until it’s too late for corrective action.

Changing the World to Fit Female Equations

Great female leaders often change paradigms. When social, political, or other expectations cannot contain the entirety of female creativity, women frequently respond to the limitations with an “I’ll change the world with my shortfall” approach.

According to researchers- “Leadership, in the classic sense, demands one to obsessively develop a single career or interest to the point their expertise in that one area serves as a beacon of trust for others to follow who can’t invest that level of sacrifice into one topic. The flip side of this is [that] it demands sacrificing everything else in life to attain that level of expertise. In my psychotherapy practice, I work with many women who are trying to advance their careers. There’s no question women are leaders in the classic sense. What often happens, though, around their late 30’s, is they realize they want more. They want better marriages that were put on hold for the career. They want to get married in the first place. They want children and realize that door is swiftly closing. It strikes me that women are in a unique position where they must decide what sort of leader they want to be. Will they be a leader in this classic sense? Or, will they sacrifice having only one obsession in order to balance a fuller life?

This, too, is a type of Leadership and is more akin to what moral philosophers would call a life of virtue – balancing the many vital needs of life into one harmonious whole. Of course, women are leaders, but it seems that the unique challenge which female leaders put before all of us is figuring out how to strive to live a fuller, more balanced life.” 

When people think of entrepreneurs, they still often think of men. While the world has changed in the last 50+ years, certain individuals’ mindsets and perceptions continue to go into traditional ‘default mode’ when envisioning the gender of a successful business owner or leader.

However, numerous studies have shown that women make the best entrepreneurs. Many people have tried to understand what characteristics women have within themselves that make them so great at both starting and running businesses.

As a female entrepreneur and business owner myself, and someone who has worked with numerous entrepreneurs – both male and female, I have been able to observe firsthand some of the traits that make women entrepreneurs so effective and successful.

1) Women know how to multitask

Being a successful entrepreneur requires multitasking. You must get a lot of things done and are often balancing both short- and long-term goals along with competing priorities. Many women have a natural ability to multitask. Years ago, when most women were primarily in the home, they were accustomed to cleaning the house, cooking, taking care of children, organizing schedules, participating in the community, etc. There was not an option to only do one thing at a time. Women’s minds give them the ability to take care of what is in front of them while handling and remembering everything else that needs to be done. Those qualities translate well when overseeing a business.

2) Women know how to anticipate needs

Most women have inherent empathic strengths. That gives them the ability to recognize and anticipate needs in others. Being a successful entrepreneur requires understanding and meeting the needs (both realized and unrealized) of customers, investors, employees, vendors, and all other stakeholders. When you understand needs, you can then effectively work to meet them. This typically translates into higher sales, customer loyalty, employee retention, great vendor relationships, and happier investors.

3) Women often work harder to prove themselves

Since there are fewer women entrepreneurs than men, the ones who choose to take the leap often work harder to prove themselves. They understand that some people might not take them seriously, may believe they can’t handle being a great entrepreneur if they are balancing running their companies while also having a family, that they may be ‘too emotional’ to handle issues, or too timid to go after opportunities. Given this, many women entrepreneurs focus on going above and beyond and putting in additional efforts to dispel these perceptions. They always make sure to be prepared and follow-through and consistently deliver the best quality in all aspects of their business.

4) Women tend to focus more on profitability

Women tend to take more calculated risks and focus more on profitability. While it has tempered a bit, there was a time, especially during the dot com craze years ago, when investors were willing to support companies who had a great idea, but not necessarily a great business model when it came to making a profit. On the other hand, women want to increase their probability of success and are typically more methodical in ensuring that they have a strong business model and are executing it in a way where they have profits left over to reinvest in the business and give their investors a great return.

When thinking from a generational standpoint, many women homemakers in the past were responsible for managing their family’s finances, especially when it came to running the home. Many women paid the bills and ensured everything was done on time and in an organized way, even when their husbands were working at their jobs and were the primary breadwinners.

These same skill sets easily translate to being an entrepreneur and running a successful business today.

5) Women tend to take more managed risks

Women tend to take more managed and calculated risks because they know that they are often being scrutinized more than men. They understand they are role models as well as entrepreneurs, and the spotlight or story on their business’ success or failure might be perceived differently.

Also, most women’s nurturing side propels them to want to take care of their employees and stakeholders in a way that does not put them in a situation where they gamble recklessly and take on unnecessary risk. This enables women to better understand risks and still capitalize on opportunities to grow, expand, and take their business to the next level, while also showing a level of restraint.

Women make the best entrepreneurs because they know how to multitask, anticipate needs, work harder to prove themselves, focus more on profitability, and tend to take more managed risks.

Having women entrepreneurs makes the business world and society better. Let us celebrate and support women entrepreneurs. They deserve it. They are the best.

Now more than ever, it is so important to teach women how to be more confident, how to feel more confident and smart. I always had an inner confidence. Ever since I was a little girl, I was always friendly, curious about others, open to trying new things, and always upbeat and smiling. 

Anything that came my way was met with an inner knowing that I would be ok, and I could handle it. This sense of confidence is growing more and more rare. 

We live in an incredibly codependent society. I find codependency is an epidemic, and in the past three decades, it has been taught. I struggled with codependency, I set out on a journey to heal and transform myself. 

What follows are some things I did and continue to do to build confidence and smarts. These are a few of the many things I suggest my clients try. When they do these things, they begin to shift into feeling more confident and smart. 

1. Talk to people

Understand that everything you want comes from another person. Smartphones have made us so reliant on technology. If we are lost, we immediately reach for our phones. If we have a question, we don’t ask a person; we Google it. The problem is that our interpersonal skills have suffered. As a Certified Professional Life Coach who helps Type A professionals who struggle with dating and relationships, I see many adults struggling with approaching a stranger to say hello and start a conversation. 

I can see myself slip into my bubble of isolation. Earbuds in, listening to a podcast as I run errands, totally disconnected. I catch myself. 

The exercise I give my clients is one I put into practice daily. I talk to 3 new people each day. I wave hello to people; I say hello to my neighbors. I chat with the grocery store clerk, the server at the restaurant. I talk to people, and it absolutely builds confidence.

Today more than ever, we must flex the muscle of interpersonal communication. We are texting, emailing, commenting on social media, and are not actually listening and speaking with clear intention. The more isolated and disconnected we are, the less confident we feel.

2. Get uncomfortable by trying new things

If the first suggestion above is triggering a sense of discomfort, all the more reason to push through. Feeling the fear, the uneasiness, and then doing it anyway builds confidence. Any time life presents me with something new to conquer. I ask myself to think of a time in the past where something similar happened. 

I made a big long list of the things I had to try to then ultimately master. For example, driving a car was a new thing. Going to school, playing sports, taking tests, going off to college, applying for jobs, going on interviews, getting hired, falling in love, overcoming heartbreak, paying bills, and managing finances. My list went on and on and on. 

Think of when you got your first smartphone, went away to college for the first time, started a new job, moved to a new home. You already had many, many firsts that were all met with resistance. There were fear and doubt. Think about all the times you wondered if you could do something, tried, and it worked out perfectly. Write down all the times you’ve achieved a favorable outcome when you’ve pushed through discomfort to achieve the greater result. 

When I did this, I felt my confidence soar. I felt smart and capable. 

3. Identify your gifts, talents, and the value you add to the various people and aspects of life

When we are little kids, we come to this planet without a doubt. We come with loads of curiosity. As soon as we start walking and exploring the adult protectors who mean well in trying to keep us safe, oftentimes dim our sparkle. They correct us when we are “being bad” or impose their beliefs about who they want to be in order to make them proud. 

What makes you proud of yourself? When was the last time you spoke highly of your accomplishments and deeper than that, your essence; without being grandiose but with a healthy level of self-esteem. 

Are you clear about the value you bring to the world and those in your immediate circles? 

Doing some deep inventory around what your gifts and talents are, what you love about yourself is absolutely a way to generate self-confidence. 

Whenever I do this, not only do I feel more confident, but I feel energized.

4. Set goals and achieve them

When you live life like a hamster on a wheel, confidence will wane. Living a boring, mundane, routine life destroys confidence and may even put you into a low energy sense of hopelessness and victimization. 

When you set goals for each day and tackle projects one by one, the sense of accomplishment adds to one’s confident bank. Simple things like making the bed, doing dishes or cleaning, washing the car are small achievements that add up to more confidence. 

Setting a more audacious goal and taking steps each day to move towards its achievement boosts confidence. 

5. Connect to God or “Source Energy” 

Unfortunately, God or faith in a higher power has been eliminated from society. Spirituality gets enmeshed in religion. 

When we aren’t of faith, we feel alone doing for ourselves by ourselves. When we know, however, that we are eternally loved, divinely guided by God, then this is a never ending ocean of confidence. When we align with our divine inner Godforce, we realize nothing is impossible unless we deem it so.

When you know that a higher power loves and adores you, you confidently go through life with a sense of wellbeing. 

These 5 things are a great way to step into confidence. As you do them, you will see who and what you manifest in your life will start to change for the better.