{"id":18767,"date":"2022-04-25T14:40:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T12:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.munich-business-school.de\/insights\/?p=18767"},"modified":"2023-09-04T12:43:01","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T10:43:01","slug":"women-in-leadership-dialogue-2022-targeted-training-on-success-factors-for-female-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.munich-business-school.de\/insights\/en\/2022\/women-in-leadership-dialogue-2022-targeted-training-on-success-factors-for-female-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Leadership Dialogue 2022: Targeted Training on Success Factors for Female Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the Women in Leadership Dialogue in April 2022, students, alumni and female leaders from the MBS network came together to discuss the barriers women face in their careers before focusing their attention on developing their success factors.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bringing (future) female leaders together in a strong network of students, teaching staff, professionals, alumni, businesses and organizations, thereby helping them to achieve their professional aspirations \u2013 that\u2019s the aim behind the Munich Business School\u2019s Women in Leadership initiative<\/a>. In early April, we finally had the opportunity to meet up and network again in person. Prof. Dr. Patricia Kraft and MBS Chancellor Dr. Christine Menges, the initiators of this valuable initiative, welcomed a crowd of inquisitive MBS students to the Women in Leadership Dialogue, hosted in the MBS Lounge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first session at the Women in Leadership Dialogue was a panel discussion on success factors for women in the working world, as well as the hurdles they face as they climb the career ladder. MBS alumna Giulia De Anna and her former professors, Dr. Patricia Kraft and Dr. Ellen Schmid, gave an insight into their study, International Female Leaders and Their Way to the Top<\/a><\/em>. In the course of her final thesis in her MBA in General Management<\/a>, Giulia De Anna surveyed female leaders from upper and top-level management in various sectors and countries, asking them about the factors that had helped and hampered them in their careers. She clustered their answers together in different categories \u2013 and the results were startling. An overwhelming number of the hurdles highlighted in the survey can be traced back to organizational and societal circumstances. However, the exact opposite was true for success factors. Many of them are not organizational or societal in nature; instead, they are based on an individual\u2019s character and interpersonal relationships. These factors include self-confidence, mentoring and the existence of networks. Although it is obviously disappointing that structural factors like prejudice continue to stand in the way of women\u2019s careers, the researchers are not disheartened by the results of the study \u2013 quite the opposite, in fact. While it takes much longer to effect organizational and societal change, they highlighted that women can still work on specific aspects of themselves and develop interpersonal relationships \u2013 and thus leverage these success factors to climb to the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the panel discussion, Anna Kopp, Head of IT and Regional Office Lead Munich HQ at Microsoft and a participant in the study, provided insights into her career path and shared a number of useful tips with the MBS students. These included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n