General Motors now has two women among its highest leadership ranks: Marry Barra as CEO and recently named Dhivya Suryadevara as CFO. An article in Forbes, written by Kevin O’Marah, highlights their leadership performance to draw conclusions about why women make strong leaders.
The author points out the multiple challenges Mary Barra has faced since being named CEO of GM in 2014 and describes how leadership qualities many women possess helped her handle those challenges. The examples he uses include the abilities to multi-task, to collaborate, and to form and leverage teams.
Since Barra, like Tim Cook at Apple and Mark Sutton at International Paper, rose to become her company’s top executive through supply chain roles, the author also cites this as evidence supply chain leaders have the qualities and skills necessary for C-suite leadership.
He references results of research conducted in 2013 by SCM World, where he is VP and leads supply chain content and research, that concluded supply chain professionals believe men and women bring different skillsets to their leadership responsibilities.