These are just some of the ways that female business leaders can combat prejudice and inspire greater success

By keeping these in mind, you can ensure not only a great place to work, but will also inspire success in others — both inside and outside your business.

By Kayleigh Alexandra,  Micro Startups is a business community that celebrates inspiring startups and small businesses of all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re a solopreneur or a startup making your way in the business world, we’re here to help. For the latest news, inspiring stories and actionable advice, follow us on Twitter @getmicrostarted.

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In this post, we’ll be looking at exactly how female business leaders can combat prejudice and inspire greater success; read on to find out how.

Be vocal: inspire others with your story

If you’re a successful female business leader, one of the best things that you can do to inspire success is to be vocal.

You’ve got invaluable insight into the world of business. Whether you’ve launched a successful business on your own, front a team of hard workers, or made your first million by the time you were thirty, your experience is unique, which means you’ve got something very special to offer young female entrepreneurs.

Share your knowledge and use this to inspire others; tell your story and share your successes. It’s also important to be honest: speak about your pitfalls, failures and how you overcame them. By sharing, you could be inspiring someone struggling with their startup after a marketing disaster or financial catastrophe — lifting them up and pushing them on.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You could write about your experiences on a blog or write a book. You could empower women by speaking at conferences. You could also host your own podcast; check out these 10 podcasts by female CEOs for women entrepreneurs for inspiration.

Stay value-driven

Staying value-driven is vital to inspiring success in others and combatting prejudice. If you don’t have some meaningful, sincere values at the core of everything you do, you will easily lose respect as your business’s success grows.

Let these values guide you and drive you. After all, you started your business for a reason because you believe that you’ve got something valuable to offer the world — whether it’s a revolutionary product, driving social change, or a unique approach to an age-old problem.

This will help you to stay motivated and focus on what is important instead of becoming distracted by trivial matters or losing sight of what is really important to you and your brand.

Staying value-driven will also inspire and motivate others who admire your work, your attitude, and what you’ve achieved.

Be open to learning

Even the most successful female entrepreneurs will always have something new to learn. Your entrepreneurial education doesn’t stop just because you’ve hit your first million or you’re selling products in 50 countries around the world.

Running your own business is an ongoing process that involves broadening your knowledge, streamlining your operations and making your business the very best it can be.

This could be anything from learning about innovative new approaches to marketing, to switching the platform you run your business on (such as going from a traditional ecommerce model to a scalable, multi-channel platform).

This extends to making mistakes and learning from them. Ask any hugely successful entrepreneur, and they’ll say that this is what helps you to learn and grow as a business leader.

Be honest about your mistakes; we all make them. It’s not the mistake that counts, but it how you rectify it and improve your process the next time around.

This is particularly important if you manage a team — you need to set a good example as a leader and inspire them. They won’t respect you if you’re unable to own up to your mistakes or pretend that they don’t exist. Worse still, this approach will infiltrate your business’s culture, resulting in a lack of ownership and your employees hiding their mistakes for fear of reprimand.

The best thing you can do is to be transparent and honest when faced with problems — ensuring that your employees are comfortable and confident when communicating their own.

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