Focus on Women Leadership Draws Praise

HYDERABAD: A three-day Future women leaders’ programme 2023, under the auspices of the Global Woman Foundation, was inaugurated jointly by Sandeep Shandilya, director, Telangana State Police Academy (TSPA), and Aruna Bahuguna from the foundation at the TSPA here on Friday.

It is aimed at bringing together women achievers from various fields and fostering the next generation of leaders. In attendance on the first day were 45 women from varied backgrounds in entrepreneurship, civil services, social development and corporate agencies.

Prof. Neharika Vohra, IIM-A, spoke about leadership styles and roles of perception in leadership, specifically for women leaders at the helm of organizations and teams. Prof. Vohra explained how observation, perception, learning, and interpretation worked and how it was crucial to recognize one’s biases and look beyond them for a complete understanding of the people and situations.

Participating in a session on ‘Strategic thinking and negotiation skills’, Radhika Rastogi, principal secretary, government of Maharashtra, came up with various personal anecdotes while emphasising the power of negotiation and dialogue to achieve the desired outcomes.

“Strategic thinking is having an understanding of a situation, being mindful of it and working towards getting the best possible outcome. In that sense, going the extra mile is very important”, said Rastogi. She narrated about how people from the rural communities had been a major and crucial part of the success of the government schemes at the ground level, especially women.

Ritika Bajaj, founder of an HR firm in Ahmedabad, told Deccan Chronicle “The session on strategic thinking gave insights into aspects of entrepreneurship, which will help me improve my firm. It was ditto with the discussion on qualities of leadership”.

Manya Gupta from Delhi, who runs a logistics start-up, said that the combination of professors and bureaucrats was the best in terms of knowledge sharing. That they came up with real-life experiences added to the learning process.