Mom, I want to become a successful businesswoman
”Mom”, the tone in my daughter’s voice raised alarm belles tingling in my head… It was the tone she reserved for the most strangest requests, questions or statements. “Mom, I want to become a successful business woman, but I don’t know how. Can you teach me?” I must admit I felt honoured that she labeled me as a “successful business woman”, who wouldn’t?
Let us be honest the time our highest ambitions were to be good housewives for our hubby’s is long gone, and it certainly isn’t the image a female role model wants to portrait towards a young girl. I felt admired and decided right there that I would teach her how to be a fabulous business woman… I just needed some time to figure out how exactly to be one, so I could share my wisdom with her.
So, I did the only wise, business thingy to do, and proposed we scheduled a ‘real’ meeting in order to do research in how to be a successful business woman. Judging by the instant serious/excited look on her face, I transcended her expectations with this little showcase of my skills. So while she left me for some girl business, I started pondering over the ‘How’ in being a successful business woman…
Well before the scheduled hour, my daughter surprised me by turning up in my ‘office’: dressed in a classic, over-knee sized black dress, high heels, hair nicely brushed over the shoulder, her macbook and a thick folder in her hand. She ment business and was certainly dressed for succes. With a feisty look, she immediately smothered any quirky remark that could’ve slipped of my tongue and handed me a folder out of the folder ( really ), titled ‘research’. “This is the research I pulled of the net, it should be sufficient”, the studied nonchalance and perfect Dutch she used saying this, suddenly gave me a little glance into her future and made me irrationally proud. Three hours, a lot of discussing, hungry but with a final draft of our answer to the question: how to be a successful business women, I felt not only proud, but also incredibly aware of the fact that my little girl became a young, dedicated and fears woman. Ready to conquer the world and outsmart me one day.
Our final list of how to be…, is a summary of, in our opinion, the most useful pointers that will help any aspiring business woman achieve her goal. We also came to the, not so surprising conclusion, that in the end woman are natural talents in business leadership. A opinion shared by many others and clearly noticeable in the changing dynamics in the top layers of the business world.
Your Appearance
It begins with making sure that you’re the walking business card of the company, take care of yourself, appearance is very important, and definetly more so when your a woman. There’s a thin line between being sophisticated or tacky, no matter how expensive your wardrobe is. And in this case we believe strongly in “less is more”.
Be assertive, without being aggressive and no matter how many times the word “no” falls, never give up.
Master the art of delegating as fast as possible. Don’t try to do everything yourself because you rely only on yourself to do it right. While delegating make sure you combine the right skills with the right task that needs to be done.
Make use of the empathic innate capacity that every woman has, business means granting services to one another and our empathic ability allows us to sense which way we can really be at service.
In general, women are masters in communication skills, we understand the need of really listening to our clients and employees. We communicate our opinions instead of announcing them. Because of that, we are able to gain their trust easily and build strong, confident, longterm relationships with them. Our communication skills are also very helpful for insuring loyal and profitable relations with our employees.
Stay true to yourself! Don’t agonise about what others think of you, rely on your own strength and capabilities. Follow your instinct and create your own leadership style. Do what you do and do it well!
Perhaps you’ll be thé successful business woman of 2019…