More than 150 of South Africa’s top women leaders gathered at The Maslow Hotel in Sandton for an evening of bold insights, powerful reflection and purposeful connection at the 10th Annual Executive Communities Women’s Dinner.
At the 10th Annual Executive Communities Women’s Dinner, leading CFOs had the opportunity to share their views on leadership with their colleagues and other women executives in the C-suite.
On the evening of 6 August, more than 150 of the country’s leading women CFOs, CHROs and CIOs gathered at the Maslow Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, to explore the theme for the evening: Mastering the Art of Impact in Times of Change.
Keynote speaker Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, the CEO of Naspers said in her keynote address that leaders are being shaped by three seismic shifts, the first being the geopolitical shift that gives executives an opportunity to create new moments and partnerships. She added that for leaders in senior roles, it means holding the organisation steady while guiding their teams.
“The second is the AI revolution because it is redefining the work itself and transforming it. There are challenges, but significant opportunities. We need to ensure that we have more skills in different roles and have other responsibilities,” she explained.
“The third one is that women are taking control of global wealth like trillions of new assets by 2023 and this will shift the current norms. As women leading we have different requirements and there is no reason why we should be doing things in the traditional way and look at different ways to focus on your role,” she said.
CFOs at the centre of it all
Rebecca Pole, the CFO at NTT Data, said during her panel discussion titled The New Value Equation that 100 percent of all roads lead to finance. She added that once one starts bringing facts and data into decision-making, that's when it becomes really quite powerful.
“So, if you look at researchers and research houses such as Gardner, they said that employee engagement increased productivity and profitability by over 35 percent. That's a staggering number,” she said.
“Likewise, if you look at the impact of quiet quitting and some of the other revolutions that we’re starting to see coming and impacting the HR organisations and also impacting our CIOs and the tech organisations, the cost of quiet quitting can be up to four percent of a company’s wage bill. There are numbers and risks that boards just can no longer ignore. So, we talk about trying to quantify these soft measures and the investments that we make in our people, the investments that we make in our technology to drive the outputs and the employer satisfaction that we need from our people,” she added.
Women empowered
In an interactive session titled The Influence Within, consciousness and recovery coach Sam Cowen spoke about the impact that women can make in their different environments. She encouraged women in corporate to be able to manage and set boundaries. “You will find that you will feel your life becomes so free when you become more responsible for your own decisions,” she said.
During the Ask a Man panel discussion, Paul Stedall, the CFO of King Price Insurance said it is important for women in corporate to feel confident in their roles and to also do their best in thriving as much as they can.
“The system is still broken. It’s still very patriarchal and the expectation that women must act like men is a broken concept and it needs to change. And you can make that change through your actions in the boardroom,” he said.
“I'd suggest when a woman is trying to prove her point she should just continue to push her point. If the men in a boardroom aren’t listening, make yourself heard. At some stage they have to stop and listen.”
The evening drew to a graceful close, filled with echoes of insight and inspiration. Beneath the soft hum of conversation, leading women executives lingered, exchanging wisdom, kindling new connections and weaving threads of possibility into tomorrow’s tapestry.
The dinner was made possible through the support of Executive Communities’ principal partners: Cassava Technologies, Entelect, iOCO, Huawei, MakwaIT, Marsh, Old Mutual Corporate and Regenesys Corporate Education, alongside executive partners: Anchor, BDO South Africa, Coupa, Discovery, HCLTech, Equinix,FranklinCovey, LRMG, Stanlib and Workday.
