3 Women, 3 Countries, 3 Effective Ways To Lead

In honor of International Women’s Day, here are three leadership lessons from three leaders in three countries.

1. Lead well by listening well.

For Aiysha (AJ) Johnson, Executive Director of the New Jersey Society of CPAs, listening well is a crucial component of leadership. It’s hard to argue with that, but too often leaders—and people in general—don’t listen as well as they speak. Why, I asked her, is listening not valued as much as it should be?

“For those individuals, those leaders who don't listen well,” she responded, “I wonder if they believe that they have other priorities that are more important than listening to the people around them.”

“You can be a wonderful orator and speak constantly,” she added, “but what are you speaking on behalf of? Do you fundamentally understand the core of your team, what makes your organization tick?”

For Johnson, listening well is an essential way to promote the mission of her organization: providing value to its members and stakeholders. For example, when there is a bill before the government that will affect business, she strives to ensure that the decision makers appreciate the role that accounting plays in commerce.

“Accounting is the language of business,” she observes. If you’ve ever studied a language other than the one you grew up speaking, you know that listening to someone who speaks that language well is the first step to being able to speak it yourself.

Leading well by listening well applies to all organizations, not just non-profit ones. For-profit companies thrive when their leaders well, too.

Whatever your own leadership role happens to be, wouldn’t you do it better if you listened better to the people you serve?

2. Value team contribution over individual achievement.

Yulia Blinova, founder Zignify Global Product Sourcing, has a refreshing answer to the question, "What is one of your successes that you're most proud of?" That answer doesn't begin with a reference to herself. Instead, she immediately gives her team the credit.

“If it wasn’t for the team...we wouldn’t be where we are as a company,” she told me. Blinova founded the Leipzig-based company in 2021, and it now has over 60 employees in 20 countries.

Humble leaders routinely give credit to others. Where does Blinova’s humility come from? “I was raised to understand that one person can do many things, but together, we can do a lot more,” she said.

Financial succcess is meaningful to Blinova, but being able to help her team members achieve their own goals is even more significant. “I am proud that we can help them elevate their life and leave better. I can't earn all of the money in the world, and I don't need a boat.”

How often do you meet a business leader who says there are more important things in the world than money?

3. Incorporate play into the training programs you offer.

When compliance professional Sabrine Makkes was launching her Dubai-based company, Envizion Consulting LLC, she saw a need to incorporate play into corporate training programs, which are too often dry and uninvolving. "Why don't we make trainings more engaging and less static?," she wondered. "Sometimes you learn more when you play."

Makkes found that traditional compliance training methods such as quizzes and videos were insufficient for long-term retention and engagement. She appreciated the transformative power of playing games, in which employees are active participants rather than passive recipients of information. In some of her programs, she uses the board game “Snakes and Ladders” (or, as it is known the the United States and some other countries, “Chutes and Ladders”).

That’s right: an old-fashioned, analog game with pieces you can hold and a board you can touch.

Good-natured competition in which the goal is to learn, say, key points from the company’s compliance policies is a great way to make a potentially boring subject entertaining and memorable. The gaming approach to corporate training can also be tailored to different budgets. Companies who want to make a game available to many employees might want to offer a sophisticated augmented reality or virtual reality game.

But whatever method an organization uses, incorporating fun into the training makes it more engaging and effective.

The takeaways

Here are the leadership lessons from A.J. Johnson, Yulina Blinova, and Sabrine Makkes that are worth taking to heart.

1. Lead well by listening well.

2. Value team contribution over individual achievement.

3. Incorporate play into the training programs you offer.

Which one will you act upon this week?

Disclosure: Six years ago, AJ Johnson’s former company hired me to give a one-hour presentation. Three years ago I served as a production advisor on a short project that Johnson created as a fellow with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.