Women in leadership – enhancing Australia-Japan work environments
Enhancing Asia capability among established and emerging women leaders is critical to increasing opportunities and improving outcomes in cross-cultural workplaces.
Asialink Business in collaboration with progressive global law firm Ashurst and the Australia Japan Society of Victoria (AJSV), held an interactive webinar: Women in leadership - enhancing opportunities in Australia-Japan working environment.
The webinar was moderated by Donna Webster (Director, Capability Development, Asialink Business) and featured a panel of senior women leaders who explored some of the unique leadership challenges and opportunities faced by women in Australian-Japanese working environments.
The panel included:
- Arabella Dove – Company Secretary, Toll Group
- Kaori Okano – Professor, La Trobe University
- Julie Hanlon – Export Manager, Patties
- Natsuko Ogawa – Partner, Ashurst
The panellists shared their own unique personal experiences on culture and gender as they intersected with their careers, studies and family lives. They also provided practical advice about leadership in the Australian-Japanese context.
Building cultural awareness
The importance of developing cultural competency and awareness was an important theme explored. For example, cultural competency courses can help remove unconscious bias in workplaces in areas such as race and gender.
Organisations such as the AJSV play a significant role in promoting mutual understanding and opportunity and also provide access to all-important cross-cultural networks.
The panel also discussed the value of developing language skills to assist with career mobility. Learning languages not only improves the ability to communicate in cross-cultural settings, but also helps build trust, mutual respect and understanding among colleagues. However, language skills on their own are not enough and need to be developed and used together with other valuable qualifications, skills and experience.
The value of having men as ‘champions of change’ within cross-cultural environments was another theme discussed. Supportive male mentors can for example help promote and endorse the skills and abilities of women and provide meaningful introductions to business leaders which can help build trust in cross-cultural settings.
Cultures are shifting
While the experience of women working in cross-cultural environments differ, the webinar highlighted that in both Australia and Japan attitudes are shifting in terms of providing greater levels of opportunity for female leaders.
Organisations that embrace diversity and inclusion can be better equipped to more fully consider issues and find solutions for problems.
Organisational support
Within organisations, the importance of having structures in place to both recognise and develop cultural capability of women leaders was also emphasised.
As a business, Ashurst for example recognises that women have different experiences to men in the workplace and this can feel isolating without proper support structures.
They have a leadership program in place called ‘RISE’, which is designed to help build confidence and skills in mid-level female partners to assist them as they advance into more senior roles.
The webinar also reinforced the overarching message that we need to continue to promote recognition that skilled and capable women make up a significant part of the global workforce and have unique qualities that can be well-suited to cross cultural environments.