Empathy can be a powerful tool to build trust amongst teams: Divya Jain

We, at Adgully, have always saluted and honoured women managers and leaders across diverse fields. W-SUITE is a special initiative from Adgully that has been turning the spotlight on some of the most remarkable women achievers in the M&E, Advertising, Marketing, PR and Communications industry. In the refurbished series, we seek to find out how women leaders have been managing their teams and work as well as how they have been navigating through the toughest and most challenging times brought about by the global pandemic.

In conversation with Adgully, Divya Jain, Co-founder, Seekho, speaks about a general trend of greater gender diversity in senior executive teams, the importance of effective time management, empathy and humility as powerful leadership tools, and more.

How do you think the role and scope of women leaders have winded in the current market ecosystem?

In retrospect, the last few years have been marked by improvements in gender diversity across various fields, and there has been a slight growth in participation of women across the upper echelons of corporate leadership. More and more women entrepreneurs have found capital support from investors in the startup ecosystem, and a general trend of greater gender diversity in senior executive teams leading to greater investor confidence has become evident. However, there is a lot of progress yet to be made, as women continue to experience challenges specific to them, such as an overlapping of personal and professional lives, gender stereotyping, lesser networking opportunities, and much more.

What has been your major learning from the pandemic period?

The pandemic was a challenging time that provided several opportunities to unlearn, relearn and reimagine the ways of the world, relationships and the way we do business. This period highlighted the crucial need to develop and implement team synergies that were driven by empathy and compassion, while reinventing methods to keep teams and employees motivated.

What has been your mantra for maintaining a successful work-life balance in the new normal? According to you, what makes women the best in crisis management?

For achieving balance, prioritising is key, and taking control of what we choose to prioritise empowers us. Effective time management is yet another indispensable skill that leaders and individuals must practice, which can help them attain set goals with ease. Women have a greater proclivity for trust-building and nurturing activities, which foster characteristics like resilience and integrity. When leading through change and crisis, it is important to implement different leadership styles and leverage collaborations, team work, and focus on relationship building. Women can display a sense of humility and openness to new ideas, and collaboration provides employees with diverse perspectives, ensuring stability between growth, change and crisis.

What are the five most effective leadership lessons that you have learned?

Leadership is transient, and requires reinvention with changing times. Working with several emerging entrepreneurs as a member of YFLO has made it evident that guiding the growth of others is equally important in the big picture. Empathy can be a powerful tool to understand and build trust amongst teams, and helps in elevating others to the best of their potential. Humility empowers a person to acknowledge mistakes, account for multiple perspectives, and promote change and growth. Overall, leaders must inspire, transform attitudes and beliefs, and align people with meaning and purpose.

Gender sensitivity in the new normal – how can organisations effectively encourage and groom women leaders in challenging times?

In the age of information and technology, with digital growth across the country, there is a crucial need to promote equal access to literacy, vocational and IT training for women. As companies transform and expand, contributing to the growth of the Indian economy, gender diversity and inclusion become all the more important. Accelerating the professional development of female employees to make senior executive and management teams more balanced and diverse, and leveraging an organisation’s platform for coaching and mentoring via women leaders and role models can help in the overall growth of a company. Every team can benefit from listening, learning and empathising with each other, clarifying solutions for individual challenges to collectively contribute to the big picture. Organisations need to actively become aware of their surroundings, identify unconscious biases, if any, and create effective leadership pipelines for women.