Global Women Leadership by Inge Donkervoort

Scandinavia. numbers. Some have managers responsible for expanding Discussing Women a negative the diversity of theirLeadership employees.often This leads quotato policy has been way of thinking. Such as explanations as to why the number present forinmany yearsare in other countries for example of women business low and could remain low in the future. Scandinavia. Besides this, are the current discussions about why women do not progress to the leading top positions in businesses. Global Women Leadership choses not to kick-off from this negative point of view, but to start from Power. Discussing Women Leadership often leads to a negative way book of thinking. Such as explanations to why number This and the documentary is the as result of athe global search for the essence of Global Women of women in business are low and could remain low in the Leadership and this (r)evolution in the world; `How Women Leaders future. create the worldÂ´

Through TOTARA and her work for Global Women Leadership Claudia is accepted by United Nations Women and member of the consultative committee NGO CSW to UN Women.

Claudia Zwart

Claudia Zwart is founder of TOTARA and initiator of Global Women Leadership. TOTARA gives life to growth. Growth for people, leaders and their teams for a better future in the broadest sense of the word. This growth can be delivered through professional Training & Coaching, Interim Management and Global Women Leadership. Claudia is passionated to contribute to this intention.

Global Women Leadership

Worldwide, there is an increasing focus on the relative low Worldwide, is aninincreasing focus on the relative low numbers of there womena business and especially low number of women business leaders. Several organizations in the numbers of women in business and especially low number Netherlands have started quotas for increasing these numbers. haveleaders. managers responsible for expanding of womenSome business Several organizations in the the diversity of their employees. This quota policy has been Netherlands haveyears started quotascountries for increasing these present for many in other for example

Global How Women leaders create the world Leadership Claudia Zwart dvd included

Global Women Leadersh Global Women Leadership How women leaders create the world

Global Women Leadership dvd included

Claudia Zwart

Totara Productions

United States

Contents Introduction

Russia

South-Africa South-African women share their vision about female leadership in their own culture.

India Russia India Suriname

USA Suriname Australia

South-Africa

Australia 4

Introduction

The power of successful women business leaders who I met in India in 2010, truly touched and inspired me. I decided that this powerful inspiration is worth further investigation. All the Women Leaders I met in India had something in common. They were exceptionally charismatic, inspiring, powerful, successful and they worked for international or global business organizations. Global Women Leadership will take and also need to take a larger share in Global Leadership. I believe that a ‘New Global leadership’ is developing in the world. To me New Leadership is about women and men. So the key question is: What is Global Women Leadership?’

Start with the Power Global Women Leadership starts with today’s powerful and influencial Women Leaders. Worldwide, there is an increasing focus on the relative low numbers of women in business and especially low number of women business leaders. Several organizations in the Netherlands have started quotas for increasing these numbers. Some have managers responsible for expanding the diversity of their employees. This quota policy has been present for many years in other countries for example Scandinavia. Discussing Women Leadership often leads to a negative way of thinking. Such as explanations as to why the number of women in business are low and could remain low in the future. Besides this, are the current discussions about why women do not progress to the leading top positions in businesses. Global Women Leadership choses not to kick-off from this negative point of view, but to start from Power.

Global Women Leadership

Mind you, these powerful Women Leaders were always present in history and are still today. Think of strong examples like Indira Gandhi (Prime Minister of India), Angela Merkel (chancellor of Germany), Hillary Clinton (USA), Dilam Roussef (President of Brasil), Julia Gillard (premier of Australia), Margaret Thatcher (premier of the UK) and Michelle Obama (USA). Global Women Leadership is researching what Women Leadership is exactly. • is this about personal qualities? • is this about personal skills? • is this about being a woman? • is this about leadership? Global Women Leadership intends to generate maximum insight and understanding of the leading business women’s world. These insights will contribute to the development and growth of Global Women Leadership in international organizations for a better future. The Discovery This desire for gaining maximum insight and understanding lead to a global search and encounters with the successful and inspiring Women World Leaders in their organizations, their countries and in their cultures. Thus I explore the Globe, searching for Women Leaders. During a period of three years I will visit the six continents of our world to meet Women Leaders, interview them and listen to their stories about their lives and their careers. These journeys are well prepared ahead of time by both of us. The result of each journey is a lot of information, many insights. long-lasting relationships, intense emotions and beautiful surprises. interview The meetings are for most of the Women Leaders an important recognition. In their own words, some the women called the interview ‘a gift from an angel’. What was unique was that they share their stories, some of which they had never shared before. Furthermore, they share the most important stories of their life with a person that intends to only listen and ask more questions, during one full day. During the interview we search for answers to a large number of questions such as • • • • • •

What made them successful and inspiring Women Leaders? What do these women really want, their ambition and their mission? What do these women want for their future, their environment and their organizations? How do they do this? How do they develop themselves and their organizations? What barriers do they come across and how do they deal with these?

• • • •

What are their beliefs about Global Women Leadership? What do they want to contribute to a better world and how do they do that? How do they want to contribute to the evolution of Women World Leaders? How could the world benefit from this?

Interesting questions answered by Women Leaders from different continents and cultures. These answers provide us with information about cultural similiarities and cultural differences between continents and countries. Based on this cultural information we could conclude whether there is a clear global trend going on. All this information is the beginning of a global development programme to further develop Women Leadership, build a global Women Leaders network and much more. Summary What I want to achieve with Global Women Leadership, with the book and the film, is to understand, inspire and develop Global Women Leadership. While developing Global Women Leadership we contribute to the development of New Global Leadership for a better world. This book and film is the result of a global search for the essence of Global Women Leadership and this (r)evolution in the world; `How Women Leaders create the world´ My wish is that the reader of this book and the viewers of the film Global Women Leadership will have the same wisdom gaining experience of discovering this topic as I have had during my exploration.

Claudia Zwart 2013

Global Women Leadership

South Africa S

outh Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is located at the southern tip of Africa. It is divided into nine provinces and has 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline Stellenbosch city

Stellenbosch, South Africa’s oldest town after Cape Town is a university town with a population of about 90,000 (excluding students). It is located about 50 kilometres from Cape Town and is situated on the banks of the Eersterivier (“First River”) in the famous wine-growing region and is encircled by picturesque mountains. The town’s academic history has its roots in the early nineteenth century when the Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch Gymnasium, the forerunner of Stellenbosch University today’s internationally renowned centre for education, the Stellenbosch University, was established. Stellenbosch University (Afrikaans: Universiteit van StellenStellenbosch is a centre for ‘clean’ industry and is a soughtbosch) is a public research university situated in the town of after location for business, ranging from entrepreneurs to Stellenbosch and the institution of choice for 566 internatiomajor international companies, many of which nal students from 21 countries around the world in 2013. have their head office in the Town of Oaks. These students of Stellenbosch University are nicknamed Maties. Some claim the term arises from their maroon rugby colours: a tamatie is the Afrikaans translation for tomato. It is more likely to come from the Afrikaans colloquialism maat (meaning “buddy” or “mate”) originally used diminutively by the students of the University of Cape Town’s precursor, the South African College.

Global Women Leadership - South Africa

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Are we aware of the impact that we have on others? I think sometimes we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think about it.

Ruth

Ruth Baitsewe runs the Unit for Document Design at the Stellenbosch University Language Centre.

Start career Global Women Leaders started their careers in different ways. Sometimes this is a well-planned activity. And sometimes they happen to be in a situation that shapes their future. Ruth Baitsewe started her career as a lecturer at Stellenbosch University’s Department of Afrikaans and Dutch..

I remember reading a story of a company in South America, I don’t know where exactly, but it’s a very successful company. It was established by the father and it was very successful and when the son took over, he decided he wanted to take them from being a world-class company to make them a company of excellence. So what did he do? Apparently, he broke down the company structures so that everyone could see who did and earned what. It wasn’t the whole secretive thing of not knowing what the CEO and his PA earned. Everyone’s salaries were made public. That ensured complete transparency. If you want to know why the CEO earns that, you can go to him and ask him, “Why on earth are you earning a million rand a month?” You could know what their job description was, what they were responsible for because they were each responsible for themselves. Imagine …

Ruth So in that respect, I have been very fortunate. And I mean part of my work is that I run a residence with 193 girls and living with 193 girls is extremely different, because as a student I was in a residence which had both male and female students. Many residences on Stellenbosch University campus are only male or female. When I started studying in ‘98, I think there were three residences which contained both male and female students but only one of these residences was reserved for undergraduate students. The other two mixed residences were for post graduate students. I mean I didn’t know Stellenbosch. I didn’t know anything about it and I ended up in this residence. There were both girls and boys and immediately I had to learn to live and communicate with very different people. I found that rather challenging.

Drive to work hard Global Women Leaders do work hard and make long hours. Often they have high energy levels and make outstanding choices for their work life balance. This current situation is influenced by former situation in their life. The role of their parents does play a role. Ruth Baitsewe explains how her parents’ thinking influences her drive to work hard. Ruth I had very strict parents and they always reminded me of various things. There was no going out to clubs, or pubs or whatever. It was, you went to school and you had your extracurricular activities which ended at 5pm. We were expected to be home once the extracurricular activities ended. So, it was - and my parents always say that - “You don’t have an inheritance. Your education is your inheritance. One day when we are not here, you should be able to stand on your own two feet and do your own thing.” Because my mom always believed that not always having had money,

Global Woman Leadership - South Africa

she always told us, “If you don’t have something, you do without it. You don’t go knock on your neighbour’s door and ask for a cup of sugar or something like that.” So that’s how we kind of grew up. I thought, “Well, I want a lot of things. I want to do this and I want to do that, so I have to work for it.” And I ended up coming to Stellenbosch to study. Initially I would have done medicine.

Vision on leaders Global Women Leaders do have a clear idea about what Leadership is. They do not always value themselves as a successful or inspiring leader. Many of them like to cocreate and execute the business strategy with their teams. In some situations even being as one of the team members. Some of these Global Women Leaders developed their knowledge and expertise about their leadership during a specific Leadership Development Programme and others learned this in practice. Ruth Baitsewe shares her vision on Successful Leaders. Ruth We’ve had all the greats and they’ve been the example, they are the inspiration. But now, we have to take up the tools and do it for ourselves. So, the reason why your concept spoke to me was, this is an opportunity for new leaders to emerge, and leaders who think about creating new leaders. Somebody once said that a great leader is someone who creates other leaders, not somebody who tries and keeps others down. I would want my success as a leader to be measured by how many other leaders I have created.

I realised that one comes to a point when maybe you are afraid to be alone. You think that someone will be the solution to your life and he’s not. No one can be. Only we are our own heroes. That’s something that has stuck in my mind. No one is coming to rescue me…

“Education change ’’ is the most powerful weapon which you can use to the world.

Global Woman Leadership - South Africa

Jeanne

Jeanne is general manager for Mars-food in Cape-Town

â&#x20AC;&#x153;As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.â&#x20AC;? The impressive Table Mountain.

Motherhood Some Women Leaders are also mother of their children. They lead their own household and their business teams. In a country like India for example do women lead extended households which includes also sometimes their family in law or their parents or brothers and sisters. These women are not only multitasking in life they are also multi-leading. This example is from Jeanne remembering her feelings for her just born baby.

It can have a detrimental impact and it might just be one thing that you say and how you say it to someone who is having a bad day and that changes their perspective of who you are and you just said one thing, but you weren’t paying attention. So it’s about paying attention!

Jeanne ……..I don’t know that human being. We’ve never shared anything together yet. And I need to do some things for myself to feel good and develop myself too. So, it was like feeling guilty in relation to all my friends and girlfriends around me and my mother too. And things are different - they didn’t work or reduced their amount of work to focus on being a mom. I can’t be a 100% mom. Well, I am a 100% mom but I’m doing it differently. I’m balancing it differently to other people. And that’s good for me.

Loyal to people When you have to reorganize your company you have to make difficult decisions. Sometimes you fully agree and sometimes you know that their new positions could harm the people who are successful today. Jeanne …And having to deal with the person at the emotional side of people knowing that they’re going to have another job, you know, all of that. We have loyal people and really had good people at a more junior level. But they were not ready to step up to the next level and the organisation forced them to because of organisational requirements. And it’s very difficult when you know that if you hadn’t made the changes as a company, the people would still have been successful in what they were doing.

The contradicton between working at a factory and common life in the townships is like the difference between black and white.

Global Women Leadership - South Africa

The greater good Leading by integrity is an art. For Jeanne leadership is also about leading people to be the best they can be. Jeanne I think for me, my legacy that I want to leave is around showing people what holistic balance looks like, as well as the fact that there are different ways to do things. There are different leadership styles and that doesn’t necessarily make one bad or one good, if you know what I mean. So, helping people to be the best that they can be, not feeling that they have to conform to someone else’s ideal. I try to, but it can be a struggle for me. So my biggest challenge, I think, my biggest battle at the moment is being myself always. Because I feel I can be myself here, I think people get it. To people that resonates with them and they see it because they see the authenticity, they see the sacrifice that I’ll make. They see that I’m not about ego and I’m not about me. That it’s about the greater good.”

HOKISA, home for kids, is caring for children living with and affected by HIV/Aids, full-time and in a family environment. When a child cannot be looked after by family members or neighbours, he or she is placed via the Magistrate’s Court at the HOKISA Home.

Through TOTARA and her work for Global Women Leadership Claudia is accepted by United Nations Women and member of the consultative committee NGO CSW to UN Women.

Claudia Zwart

Global Women Leadership

Global How Women leaders create the world Leadership Claudia Zwart dvd included