The female advantage - Sally Helgesen

Now in Currency paperback -- Sally Helgesen's
classic study of female leaders and how their
strategies represent a highly successful revision of male
leadership styles. Sixty thousand copies in print!
In her bestselling 1990 book, Sally Helgesen
discovered that men and women approach work in
fundamentally different ways. Many of these differences
hold distinct advantages for women, who excel at
running organizations that foster creativity,
cooperation, and intuitive decision-making power,
necessities for companies of the twenty-first century.
Helgesen's findings reveal that organizations run by
women do not take the form of the traditional
hierarchical pyranaid, but more closely resemble a
web, where leaders reach out, not down, to form an
interrelating matrix built around a central purpose.
The strategy of the web concentrates power at the
center by drawing others closer and by creating
communities where information sharing is essential.
She presents her findings through unique, closely
detailed accounts of four successful women
business leaders -- Frances Hesselbein of Girl Scouts
USA, Barbara Grogan of Western Industrial
Contractors, Nancy Badore of Ford Motor Company's Executive
Development Center, and Dorothy Brunson of Brunson
Communications. Helgesen observes their meetings,
listens to their phone calls and conferences, and
reads their correspondence. Her "diary
studies" document how women leaders make decisions,
schedule their days, gather and disperse
information, motivate others, delegate tasks, structure
their companies, hire, and fire. She chronicles how
their experiences as women -- wives, mothers,
friends, sisters, daughters -- contribute to their
leadership style.