
John Lyons is a Brisbane-based independent company director and adviser, and a Queensland Councillor of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is also co-author with Dr Edward de Bono of two titles on lateral thinking in business.
What is it about women? It seems widely acknowledged that they are smarter than men, or at the very least more intuitive. Remarkably, many men and women tend to agree on that. Why then do men apparently still have a better chance of getting to the top, for the time being at least?
Why indeed, when those women who have made it to the top generally do such an outstanding job? Over 100 of the nation’s top female business leaders are listed on the Chief Executive Women (CEW) website www.cew.org.au. Women like Jillian Broadbent, Meredith Hellicar, Margaret Jackson, Gail Kelly, Linda Nicholls and Carla Zampatti to name just a few. Clearly this list is only the tip of a veritable iceberg of highly successful female business leaders in Australia.
Being the father of three girls is one reason I’ve always been passionate about the future of women in leadership. The other is that in my personal experience as a CEO and now non-executive director on several boards, it strikes me that women have special qualities that potentially put them ahead in modern business leadership.
Recently, a QUT Brisbane Graduate School-sponsored group of women business leaders, Fostering Executive Women (FEW), invited me to speak my mind on what women should do to improve their lot in business leadership. Being put on the spot and needing to make sense to a well-informed, critical and mostly female audience, I called on some acknowledged women leaders for their views.
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