ABSTRACTThe participation of women in leadership positions continues to gain awareness and attention across the globe. Governments, international organisations, employers and academic scholars all continue to promote women participation in leadership positions in Organisations. While there seem to be adequate literature on the barriers and challenges of women in leadership …
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ABSTRACTThe participation of women in leadership positions continues to gain awareness and attention across the globe. Governments, international organisations, employers and academic scholars all continue to promote women participation in leadership positions in Organisations. While there seem to be adequate literature on the barriers and challenges of women in leadership positions, literature on success factors remain extant and scarce. Using a qualitative narrative research inquiry approach through a semi-structured interview with 12 women leaders, this study has explored the success factors of women in leadership positions in the Sunyani Municipality as well as the challenges they encounter. The findings revealed that education, mentoring, family support, combination of leadership skills and styles, training programmes and initiatives, resilience, teamwork, vision and focus are the success factors of women in leadership positions in the Municipality of Sunyani. The challenges include internal politics, inadequate organisational support, family problems and mistrust from other members in the organisation. Nonetheless, the problems are resolved through development and implementation of the success factors as well as some skills and competencies such as problem-solving skills, analytical skills, emotional mastery, communication skills, persuasive and negotiation skills.Aside its contribution to the extant literature on success factors of women in leadership positions, it has practical implications of enabling employers and government put in adequate policies to help women in leadership positions to be very successful at a time when the call for women inclusion in leadership positions is a global goal.Keywords: Success factors, women in leadership, leadership challenges, skills, competencies
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