Influential Women in Business.
Corporate shoots are fairly standard. You capture the feel and content of a conference, workshop or an away-day ensuring key participants are covered and provide the viewer with a sense of the scale or environment in which the shoot was made. However, there are a few occasions where you attend an assignment and the topic is of great interest to you personally and you are inspired by individuals during a presentation. As mentioned in my bio and can be seen in my Linkedin account – my career prior to pursuing my passion was in Bluechip corporations in the field of Commercial Services – working predominately in strategic sourcing and procurement advisory services for financial organisations and central government. So here I am doing a shoot in a field and area that I have spent many years of my life working. So you must understand the double interest for me – photography and commercial services.
My feature for this month’s blog ‘A shoot with..’ is:-
Katharina Stenholm – CEO | Global CPO | SABMiller Procurement GmbH.
Katharina was one of the key speakers at my recent corporate shoot. Not only was I able to capture her during her talk, we had a business portrait shoot after the event.
Katharina has spent more than 20 years in the corporate world, her extensive experience range from research & development to marketing; to management and now global leadership.
Katharina Stenholm joined SABMiller Procurement as VP Brewing Raw Materials in April 2010, from the Polttimo Group where she was CEO. She built a strong Brewing Raw Materials team before accepting the role as VP Business Transformation in SABMiller Procurement. After successful completion of this transformation programme, Katharina was appointed SABMiller’s Global CPO / CEO of SABMiller Procurement GmbH, accountable for around $10bn of external spend. Katharina has a PhD in Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry.
At this event, Katharina presented on ‘leadership and does gender matter’. Katharina believes gender does NOT matter in leadership, but rather gender diversity! 
Studies have show that gender diversity ensures a healthier, more productive and result achieving organisation. Each gender brings useable, productive and valuable contributions to the table. No one is ‘better’ than the other, instead complimentary if the mix is correct. Katharina states, getting the right gender diversity mix in leadership is the key to a successful environment. The current belief of having, in particular, women appointed in 
one or two strategic positions because ‘it is the right thing to do’ is not the way forward. In fact it can be counter productive.
What think tanks and expert bodies have focused on in the past for good leadership skills have changed. Perhaps that is in part due to the rising number of women leaders. The focus is less on drive, strength, negotiating capabilities or even analytical skills but more on what has traditionally been known as ‘the soft skills’ i.e. relationship management skills, communication skills, people management skills and importantly creativity. Such skills have been attributed to women in the past, but studies have show that successful male leaders also exhibit the above skills.
So what does this mean?
Katharina explained that the focus should definitely not be on gender. Get the right balance and diversity, yes; but the focus should primarily be on whether the candidate has the right skills for today’s leadership. Decision-makers should be looking not to ‘do the right thing’ but the ‘smart thing’. In essence, the selection process should purely be based on the person who has the required and best skill-set to lead regardless of gender.
One of the closing points of Katharina’s speech that I liked and remembered quite well is ‘Forget about the glass ceiling! If you don’t believe it is there, it will not stop you!’
Indeed.
Back to my shoot itself. It was the business portrait shoot where I witnessed the mixture between a focused professional business women and a lighthearted humorous individual. A dynamic person and I suspect that is one of the keys to her successful career to date. She was a pleasure to photograph and it was a great shoot in more ways than one.
Elaine Pringle Photography
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