The Female Advantage

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.