Women make up nearly half of Australia’s workforce, yet they hold only 10% of CEO positions in ASX 300 companies.
The challenges are clear: unconscious bias, fewer sponsors, and limited access to high-visibility projects. But the solution isn’t about working harder. It’s about developing the right leadership skills.
Priority Management Australia has trained leaders across corporate offices, mining sites, and government departments for over 40 years. Five skills consistently separate women who advance into senior leadership from those who plateau.
Five Key Leadership Skills That Make a Difference
1 – Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence means you recognise your own emotions, read other people accurately, and manage both well.
Leadership comes down to people. Building trust, resolving conflicts, and keeping teams going when pressure hits. Research shows EQ accounts for nearly 90% of what separates high performers from people with the same technical skills.
A lot of women already have good instincts here, particularly for reading social dynamics. But there’s a difference between doing it naturally and using it strategically.
Emotional intelligence has four parts:
- Self-awareness helps you spot triggers before reacting badly.
- Self-management keeps you calm when things fall apart.
- Social awareness reads the room: who has checked out, who is frustrated, who needs support.
- Relationship management combines everything to lead people through challenging situations.
Build this through daily reflection. Take five minutes each evening to write down what triggered strong emotions and how you responded. Over time, patterns will emerge.
In tense moments, pause for three seconds before you speak. This gives your brain time to think strategically instead of just reacting. And when you ask your team questions, listen to their actual answers rather than planning what you will say next.
2 – Strategic Thinking and Vision Setting
In senior leadership roles, strategic thinking sees past this week’s deadlines. You connect unrelated information and make decisions for what is coming, not just what is here.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency found women get operational tasks while men get strategic projects. This gap blocks promotions because women lack the strategic experience their male counterparts have on their resumes.
Strategic thinking does not replace daily work. It requires making space alongside it. Set aside two hours each week with no meetings or emails. Use that time to read reports from outside your function, talk to colleagues in other departments, and question your assumptions. If you were starting from scratch, what would you do differently? Where might your current thinking be off?
Try this exercise: think about a trend you are interested in (AI, remote work changes, new compliance requirements) and spend half an hour researching it. Then ask yourself questions like: What would you need to do differently? And how might this affect your customers in two years?
Seek other people’s viewpoints that challenge your own, as strategic thinking grows through practice and hearing different perspectives.
3 – Authentic Communication and Executive Presence
Executive presence is what makes people pay attention when you speak. The traditional definition was written for men. Deep voice, commanding the room, taking up physical space.
Authentic communication beats imitation. Catalyst Australia found that women who communicate authentically build more trust than those who copy aggressive male styles or are overly accommodating.
Watch your voice as upward inflection at the end of statements can sound like questions. Your voice should go down at the end when you are making a point. Drop qualifiers like “just,” “maybe,” or “I think” when stating facts. Say what you know directly.
Say “I have something to add” instead of “I am sorry to interrupt”, and stop apologising for no reason. Ensure you prepare key messages before big meetings so you deliver clearly.
Eye contact matters, open gestures matter, and taking up space matters. But faking a personality backfires. People spot it immediately.
4 – Resilience and Adaptive Leadership
Resilience is your ability to recover from setbacks and keep going when things get hard. Women in leadership deal with more stress than men at the same level, according to the Diversity Council Australia. More scrutiny, fewer role models, and bias that their male colleagues do not face.
Resilience does not mean grinding yourself into the ground. You need actual strategies that work, such as exercise and sleep. Not because they make you feel virtuous, but because they keep your brain working. Talk to other women who understand the specific pressures you are under. You need people who will tell you when something is genuinely unfair versus when you are catastrophising.
When something goes badly, ask what you can learn from it. Not in a toxic positivity way, but practically. What would you do differently? What can you take from this?
Be equally direct with your team. If you do not know something, say so. Pretending you have all the answers when you do not makes people stop trusting you, and admitting what you are still figuring out actually builds credibility.
5 – Collaborative Leadership and Influence Without Authority
Command-and-control does not work anymore. You get results through collaboration, such as buy-in, coalitions, and influencing people outside your reporting line.
Women often do this well because they build relationships and include people in decisions. McKinsey found that organisations with collaborative cultures perform five times better.
Collaborative leadership involves people in decisions affecting them. You still make final calls, but you seek input and explain reasoning.
Look to build relationships beyond your team. Understanding other departments’ problems helps position your ideas to gain support, and connect proposals to what others care about, not just your goals.
Influence needs credibility plus relationships. Credibility comes from delivering results and knowing your area, and relationships come from understanding what matters to stakeholders and helping them succeed.
Developing Your Leadership Skills
These are learnable skills, not innate talents.
Books, podcasts, and reflection help. But growth speeds up with mentorship, coaching, and formal training that gives frameworks you can apply immediately.
Priority Management has worked with women leaders for over 40 years. The training uses practical tools you can implement straight away, not just theory.
These five skills increase your impact and open advancement opportunities. They show up in confidence, team performance, and career progression.
Explore Priority Management’s leadership training or call 1300 139 126 for a consultation.