Live from #BlogHer: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi on the leadership principles that guide her

Written by Jessica Miller-Merrell on August 8, 2011 | Comments (15)

This post is by Jessica Miller-Merrell, a leadership blogger at Blogging4Jobs. She is a digital strategist with a passion for recruiting, human resources, training and social media and is the author of “Tweet This! Twitter for Business,” a how-to business guide for Twitter.

Female business leaders hold an advantage over their their male counterparts because they nurture and add humanity to the position, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said during her keynote address at BlogHer last week. “Women globally represent 70% of the buying decisions around the world,” Nooyi said. ”There’s a shift happening among women in the world.”

This shift Nooyi mentioned is happening across the board, and conferences such as BlogHer are an example. The importance of incorporating humanity into advertising, business and the executive role is something that has become extremely important since the recession. Nooyi told the audience that senior leaders must balance their IQ with their EQ, or emotional intelligence. This emotional intelligence provides female leaders a huge advantage to relate directly to their employees and consumers. “Employees perform better when they bring their whole selves to work,” Nooyi said.

The proportion of women in leadership positions at organizations has yet to reflect the shift Nooyi mentions. Only 12 women hold the CEO position at Fortune 500 companies.

Nooyi distills her leadership philosophy into “Five C’s,” which she shared with the audience.

• Competency. Stand out from the pack and be a lifelong learner. Remain ahead and abreast in your field.

• Courage and Confidence. Speak out. Establish your knowledge base and be confident in it as a leader.

• Communication. Over-invest in written and oral communication. Leaders constantly have to motivate the troops.

• Consistency. Remaining steady, reliable, and determined allows for credibility and a baseline to measure your successes and failures.

• Compass. Integrity is critical in this job.