Women need a nudge to step up and take up leadership roles: Pooja Thakran

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, Pooja Thakran, Senior Director - Corporate Communications, CSR for Honeywell, speaks about corporate leadership, how the share of women in the leadership pipeline has reduced globally since the pandemic, the need to have mentors, coaches and promoters for women in the organisation, and more.

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

Women are essential part of the overall business and customer base, it is only fair to have them well represented in the corporate leadership.  They form a strong customer base driving consumption, utility and decision making on multiple fronts so the ecosystem has to be designed to have more women play a role in the market ecosystem. From the product design stage itself, we need to have a diversity of thought on how we can also consider designing products keeping the gender balance in mind. Example, for the longest time Automotives were designed keeping men in mind, while women too are drivers and the design of some of these products is very gender insensitive. While we have made strong strides in this area, there is still a lot of room to think about how the traditional designs, concepts and parameters are reviewed with more gender neutral to gender equal approach.

According to IBM and Chief’s latest study on women in the workplace, the share of women in the leadership pipeline has reduced globally since the pandemic. The study also highlights that people surveyed in India are not hopeful and believe that it will take a minimum of 13 years to achieve gender equality in leadership positions. It is essential that organizations take concrete steps to address these issues and create more opportunities for women to succeed in leadership roles.

What has been your major learning from the pandemic period?

The pandemic has shown that technology can play a great role in being an equaliser and enabler of making things manageable.  From easily adapting to work from home during covid, we saw tech playing a great role in making things productive and efficient. Automation enabled companies to continue to deliver and corporates to function. At the same time, people adapted to the change it brought about. The rollout of vaccines and the role of technology to ensure the adoption of vaccine was also efficient and effective. While this was a great sign of strong resilience that humans have coupled with technology, we also saw women had to take the load at multiple fronts and it wasn’t easy for all of them. We have to be agile yet empathetic at multiple levels.

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

If one has passion and is in the job that they truly love, you start to enjoy your day to day routines and it hardly gets glaring and unmanageable. For me what works is prioritising and delegating the jobs. Also, one has to learn to set right expectations and reason out with logic to say “No” when it’s necessary. I also like to take short breaks every few months so I don’t burn out as our jobs are very stressful and can mean long hours at a stretch, so it’s important to balance out with short breaks as and when you can to recoup and revive.

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

Five leadership lessons:

There is no shortcut to success – It is through hard work and being the best at what you do

Challenge Status Quo – Don’t just assume or take what others try to preach or convey, you need to go with logic, challenge the old and bring out the reasoning for what new you prefer to do with strong business case and outcomes

Be a life-long learner and have a continuous improvement mindset – Keep learning and keep improving.  Once has to be on a look out for what we can do better than what it was earlier

Hire for Attitude and not just skills – Skills can be built, but a poor attitude cannot be fixed

Humility and Empathy are the bed rocks of great leadership – Be tough in setting the right expectations and ambitions, but drive things with humility and empathy.

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

Women need a nudge to step up and take up leadership roles and have to be convinced that they are ready to take on the next elevated role. I have seen this many times in my experience and while for men it is natural they are confident, women need more convincing or at time have to be told that they are ready. We need to have mentors, coaches and promoters for women in the organisation that can scout out for them. This will help drive more women in leadership.

We need to also set some role models for women to look up to. They help to inspire others and its important there are learnings through their journeys one can build.

We also need employee support groups which can be leveraged by women in the organisation to draw support and be a sounding board for any interventions that may be needed that are systemic or cultural.