Why women at work need a fairy godmother

Women need to reach out to each other and create a chain of sharing and learning.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi's acceptance speech at the 2015 Girls Write Now awards is one I'm going to save for my daughter to read when she is on the verge of womanhood.

Ngozi clearly lays out her opinion on what holds women back from realising their potential and how girls are attuned to this sort of thinking from childhood. Her views are not path-breaking but to hear a successful woman of my generation say it out loud makes me feel like I have sisters-in-arms fighting the same battles and sharing their hard-won secrets of success.

This real-woman wisdom is something I could have done with as an uncertain 21-year-old entering the world of professional finance. I wish I had access to Ngozi's words when I was a new mother at 27, struggling to balance a baby and a new business. Reading it at 30 would have given me the confidence I needed to show my work to editors and ask to be given a chance as a writer.

I am fortunate to have had a couple of great mentors who were men. Their wisdom and insights have added a lot of value professionally for me. However, there were many times that I was unable to use the approaches they suggested. Many a time, they were unable to see the issues I faced as problems, simply because they had absolutely no experience with such scenarios.

In each of these cases, after a spending a couple of hours telling myself to maintain a stiff upper lip, I fell back on books and articles written by women who had been in similar scenarios, such as the one by Ngozi.

While all the material I read was by successful experienced women, it took a lot of time and trial and error to hit on solutions that worked in my industry and situation. At such times, I felt the disadvantage of not having a great female mentor, a girl-Yoda of sorts.

Another factor that differs in the case of men and women is perception. A whole lot of high-performing women, who I have been fortunate to come in contact with over the years, have admitted to experiencing bouts of Imposter Syndrome. Even when you are killing it at work and leading a team consistently to success, the pressure of having to simultaneously market yourself to people who doubt your abilities affects a person's self confidence.

Sheryl Sandberg and Tina Fey have admitted to having suffered from the infamous syndrome, despite their publicly-acknowledged successes. Such differences in societal attitudes and the basic psyche of men and women make a strong case for young women to seek out mentors who can really help them navigate a work life, not just a job.

It took me close to 10 years to accept that I build teams and nurture professional relationships differently from, but just as effectively as, my husband or brother. In my 20s, I would constantly try to emulate successful men in the organisations I worked for and it would usually feel like I was wearing someone else's clothes.

I mentor because I strongly feel that women have strengths that they don't recognise and use. We opt instead for tools that don't suit our basic dispositions. For example, we are great negotiators given our tendency to prefer win-win solutions to an all-out winner vs loser one. We also have the innate ability to identify what truly motivates people in our teams, thus building stronger organisations.

It takes a lot more courage for most women to go to work than a man. Given the challenges we face, each of us needs to know if we are doing it right and if not, then how to course correct. Most importantly, mentoring may open up traditionally male-dominated areas as each generation of women kicks off at a higher starting point given the learning they can gain from the previous one.

Recognising the need for mentors is the first step. The execution of it needs effort on part of both the potential mentor and mentee. Women need to reach out to each other and create a chain of sharing and learning. If organisations can create an environment to support this sort of mentoring for women, they will reap tremendous benefits.

The journey to success has been chartered by women before us. The routes may be overgrown and incomplete but the starting points have been marked out. We need to match guides to travellers, to get them equipped for the journey and to help them find the path again when they get lost. This is the best way to make sure we harness the energy and commitment that women can add to any workforce.

The writer is an entrepreneur and chartered accountant. Views expressed are her own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.