Journal Press India^®

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Women in today’s organizations are capable enough to change as well as challenge the existing trends and thus infusing new style of leading the organizations. The growing impact of women in the workplace has kept the leadership style of women on the research agenda. The trends are changing with the increase in the number of women at the workplace. This paper examines the literature relating to the different leadership styles adopted by women in order to explain the relation between women and transformational leadership. Women are playing an important role in the evolution of leadership. They are more likely to be transformational leaders in comparison to men who are found to be transactional and task-oriented. Given the superiority of the transformational style over the transactional style alone, why are women less likely to be occupying the most senior positions in the organizations? This paper tries to bring out the various problems faced by the women holding senior positions and the hurdles that they crossed to get promoted. It also tries to study the impact of such kind of leadership on the performance of the companies and the other benefits related to the same. Organizations need to accelerate this shift to 21st century leadership wherein women are ready to steer the companies through volatile market environment and stiff competition by addressing the various obstacles to success, promotion and retention of highly capable women.

Keywords

Transformational Leadership, Glass Ceiling, Styles of Leadership, Transactional and Task Oriented.

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