For decades, women have played a significant role in networking, an important area of business. Not only are they present, but they are also successful in these networking processes. On the one hand, this is no surprise, as throughout history women have been able to exercise this competence in smaller, larger, aristocratic or rural communities. On the other hand, it is a miracle, because history has also shown that women had been exiled (mostly privately) from real economic, political or other situations for a long time.
Today, women are not only helping communities, but they are also supporting one another. As Jennifer DaSilva writes in her article on female mentoring, this support is good business, both indirectly and directly, as well as in the shorter and longer-term. Knowledge and experience can not only be fruitful to one another in the actual moment but, they can also set the basis for mutually beneficial transfers in established networks, even between sectors and company cultures. In fact, it is through these relationships that sectors and women’s communities across corporate cultures not only help but also energize each other. When a common voice, a common interest, a shared experience is formed and established, it can lead to common success. After all, as the old saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: the relationship between three women works quite differently from thirty or three hundred. One sees examples, hears success stories, learns best practices, shares experiences (failures?) and receives answers, reactions, interpretations, empathetic attention, professional and human, analyst or emotional.
This energization is one of the keys to competitiveness: women’s attitudes are undoubtedly the preferred factors when updating and transforming corporate cultures. But that’s not all. Mutual “recharging” can create or even multiply amazing resources, while the so-called “cat-fight” in the corporate world is poisonous: it generates real lose to lose situations. By the end of 2010, the cat-fight had become an old-school attitude once and for all. As former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: „There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
In her writing, DaSilva also refers to research, which indicates that the support among women has been growing. Through networking and mentoring, younger and older women help each other to create platforms that showcase their support communities and their results. They become more confident, increase each other’s self-esteem, and provide a supportive environment for participants.
Of course, there are still many she-devils who dump on others and attack each other, but more and more corporate cultures are becoming environments where such an attitude is increasingly difficult to enforce. More and more people are measuring and perceiving, experiencing and knowing that the struggle between women is best suited to lower their self-esteem while working together can have the opposite effect. So, it’s worth connecting: in both word and deed.
