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The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership

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Sally Helgesen's profound book shows how women lead differently...via a "web" instead of a hierarchy. Women in the workplace have long been told that we can't compete effectively because of the games (meaning tea parties instead of competitive sports) we played as girls. But, guess what? Sally Helgesen shows that the world based on hierarchies is spinning out of control...and the games we girls played (which hinged on relationships)turn out to be exactly the right games, giving women the unusual strength our world needs to evolve in a powerful new direction.

The rules have changed and women already know them. Not only does this book boost all women's self-esteem, but it also charges us to realize our responsibility to the world in which we live: "...feminine principles are entering the public realm because we can no longer afford to restrict them to the domestic sphere, nor allow a public culture obsessed with Warrior values to control human destiny if we are to survive." [p.255]

How true.

You may have read this book in 1990, when it first came out, as I did. It's worth another look now, if only for chapter 9 - Reconciling the Efficient and the Humane. In the 90's, some of us speculated that the future of leadership would come from the skills women have posessed for generations. As we look for ways to integrate the human element back into the workplace, as we read books on Emotional Intelligence and Resonant Leadership, it's time to acknowledge Helgesen's foresight. What did she tell us we needed back then? She started with an ambience that represented a different set of values. Next, listening, followed by collaborative negotiation. She foresaw what she terms the end of the warrior age.
Helgesen's interviews are as interesting today - and as fresh - as they were when the book was first published. We may have heard this message a few times by now, but I don't think it will ever get old.

Too often, as women, we abandon, dismiss, or deny our feminine wisdom. We distract ourselves and lose sight of our own innate wise feminine approaches to leadership. It's put on the back shelf as we compete, produce, and succeed from our dynamic masculine assets. Then we are less effective, depleted and confused. We begin to doubt ourselves. Yet some part of us knows, and longs to intensify the sustaining flow and effectiveness of our innate feminine nature.

Sally Helgesen takes apart the self limiting beliefs that constrained women from the natural power of their leadership and, even more importantly, shows that women leaders, who lead from their feminine approaches make smarter decisions and build better businesses. They experience a greater sense of personal power so that they are spending their time on what matters the most to them. When we connect our wisdom, our leadership, and our feminine approaches we are the kind of leader the world needs today.

The world has change and organizations who want to continue their success need to change. Women in leadership bring a different approach to being a leader. Wise feminine leadership is an underutilized and critically needed resource for today's growing company. As Sally says on p. 225, "The ability to model and persuade is of particular importance in an organization where authority is not imposed from the top down in hierarchical fashion. In a web structure, where talent is nurtured and encouraged rather than commanded, and a variety of interconnections exist, influence and persuasion take the place of giving orders...Compassion, empathy, inspiration, and direction - all aspects of nurturance - are connective values...."

Will we lose the competitive advantage as we amplify our feminine approaches? Sally Helgesen makes a solid case - the answer is No.

Helgesen cautions us in 1990 that "Feminine values are entering the public realm because we can no longer afford to restrict them to the private domestic sphere, nor allow a public culture obsessed with Warrior values to control human destiny if we are to survive." Indeed, nearly two decades later Warrior values have brought the world to greater peril than ever before in our history. She prescribed not the end of Warrior values but rather the blending of them with feminine values for healing the conditions Warrior values have fostered, in other words, balance. For the primary values, the metavalues of humankind are shared by mature leaders of both sexes. They are what they have always been, Truth, Beauty and Goodness. How can this work? When male warrior values tends toward arrogance, Truth reminds him of his limitations. When warrior viewpoints narrows the area of his awareness, Beauty reminds him of the richness and diversity of human existence. When warrior power corrupts, Goodness cleanses. For it is Love--the composite of the MetaValues of Truth, Beauty and Goodness--that the mature and dedicated female leader can supply in abundance, and what the world sorely needs today.

This carefully conducted research study of how women manage and how women lead provides a baseline for similar studies that follow. Women really do manage and lead differently, and that difference enriches the workplace. I am using this as one of the texts in a web based graduate course focusing on leadership that I am teaching. There are leadership lessons for everyone here.

In her book, the Female Advantage, author Sally Helgesen distinguishes the basic characteristics among men and women and the advantages of these unique qualities in women when performing a leadership role. Throw out those books that tells you that you have to play the big boys games in order to succeed in the corporate world. Because what really takes to succeed lies in our in our thinking and our basic behavior al differences from men. Instead of blinding to these characteristics to `fit in', she tells us to embrace them and use them to our advantage.

She entails these characteristics from the female executives in her book, not in an interview but rather in a `diary' format, watching and learning by their behavior. She presents four different women in her book, the President of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. , A Ford Motors Executive, a founder and president of a telecommunications company and a founder and president of millwrighting firm. These diverse group of women are put under the microscope in her book in order to not just define what a female leader is but also the advantages of being a female leader.

Helgesen points out that women have distinguishing qualities that she calls `feminine principles' that allow them to be better managers and responsible leaders. These feminine principles reflect our culture's basic presumption about differences between how men and women act and establishment of these principles in the public sector results would result in a more enriched life. She challenges the hierarchial structure of the corporate world by presenting female perspective by offering a web construct where direct communication and free flowing of ideas are encouraged and relationships are valued.

Her writing is loosely structured filled with inquisitive remarks. The stories of the four women she documented are interesting read and provide a window to the private lives and behavior of successful females. Whether you are a woman just planning the first seeds in her career or whether you're a seasoned leader, this is a good book to read to recharge ourselves and claim a stake of our worth in this world.

Includes a "day in the life of" Barbara Grogan, who at the time of writing (1990) was forty-three year-old founder and president of Western Industrial Contractors, a $6 million millwrighting firm in Denver. Grogan is one of many successful women profiled with an eye toward spotting gender characteristics that give women an edge