What are the most important ways that women can cultivate their leadership personas?

Thank you for your question. It comes at a perfect time because I have just started mentoring a young woman from Nepal via the WeduFund nonprofit because I believe that the world needs more female leaders: in my opinion the world will be a much better place when we have a 50-50 presence of female-male leaders in all fields.

The way you phrased your question makes me want to share two disclaimers before I continue:

1. Any answer given here has to be a generalization: all women (and men) are different. Every single client I work with (man and woman) has a different story and requires to find their own unique path the building their leadership persona. I understand that you're looking for general trends, which is what I will focus on.

2. Your question implies a difference between men and women. To keep this answer relatively short, the only difference I will highlight is that in my experience of coaching, training and mentoring women managers, executives and entrepreneurs is that women tend to have the reverse strengths and weaknesses men have. For example, most of my male and female clients agree with the statement "when men think, they say they know; when women know, they say they think". Please let me know if this was actually the focus of your question.

In business as well as in media, most leadership personas are still portrait by men. A direct result is that most female leaders believe they have to emulate the way men cultivate their leadership (which may very well work for some!).

The three basic principles will always be the same, however the journey and the way to fulfill these principles will alway be different:

1. Building your brand. I have written a book called "you are your brand" where I describe this process in more details. You have to tell a great story, show your vision, share your values and walk the talk. Your brand must be build within your organization, within your network of friends, within your industry as well as on social media. How does your peronsal brand look like now? What does your ideal brand look like?

2. Building relations up (hierarchic superiors, mentors), side-ways (colleagues at the same level, clients, suppliers) and down (direct team members, junior employees). A persona is an image people have of you: once you have clarity of your brand, you have to create a network of people who know and believe in your brand. Cultivating relations and building a strong network of followers is crucial to establishing your leadership. How are you current relations up, sideways and down? Which ones do you need most improvement on?

3. Continuously grow as a leader: some people may be tempted to build a leadership persona without actually being great leaders. You can build the best brand in the world but if you don't walk the talk, people will eventually notice your persona is only sparks and artefacts. It is crucial that you continuously grow as a leader because the best leader create leaders. In other words, your leadership will be most fully established the moment your mentees / followers have taken your position. This means that you must have taken the steps to grow to the next level up. What are your strengths and successes as a leader? What does the next level of leadership look like for you: where are you going?

A good example of a female leader who does not attempt to emulate male leadership is Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook. I recommend to many of my female clients to this her book "Lean In" because it is a great basis for developing our coaching relationship. While reading the book, make notes of what you can relate to and what does not relate to you: we can then focus on the similarities and differences because like everyone... you are unique.

If you want to explore how to build your brand, how to build relations and how to grow as a leader, you can get in touch via Clarity or take a look at my work on www.about.me/noamkos

Hello! Interesting question with a lot of optional answers possible! If the question is primarily about yourself (whether you are a woman or not), you might want to define what leadership means to you, how you have demonstrated it in the past in any shape or form and the impact it has had in your life, and your connections (stakeholders, friends, staff, etc.)
Based on that reflection, the choice is yours to define the type of leader you want to become and
1- with the help of other leaders, from the same gender or not, mixed or women-only, explore your own particular style. (That would be peer-mentoring).
2- try out your own leadership "persona" in a different context, industry, paid or volunteering experience, with people you maybe wouldn't particularly connect to instinctively, that's the open innovation context.

3. And finally, based on your priorities, life or work context, i would also look at how you embed/express your values and leadership style in all areas. (Years ago, i led a fulfilled life as a professional and realised my values didn't have any space to express themselves at home, it felt very unbalanced.. My leadership persona was a ghost at home... I learned to address this successfully with
1) a 1-2-1 coaching programme
2) connection to peers during a Common Purpose programme.

If I were to work with youon this topic, we would most probably explore ways women find their mark, feel comfortable with their values and find ways to express these values and be connected to them everywhere in their life (as much as they can). And what needs to shift, transform, go, to make this happen!

always showing his character and way of thinking would be essential to follow as the leading part. The image and the determination would be another way to show leadership.
Image, character, humility, concern for his people and could list many more.

Think about a woman whom you know who has in your eyes become successful and think about what traits she demonstrates. Take a piece of paper and write them all down. Of the successful women I know the main one is always self-belief. To succeed in business, you must believe that you can do it. The second one is the determination to succeed; that is the ability to not take no for an answer, to view everything that goes wrong as a learning opportunity to do it better or differently the next time. If you have these two abilities, then you are on your way to succeeding. If you do not have them then you can start to cultivate them, and this will cultivate your leadership personas.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath