The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership

by 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.

Genres: Leadership, Womens Studies, Feminism, Womens, Nonfiction, Psychology, Personal Development

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1990

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

SWE book club March 2009

Disappointing. First of all, this was written in 1990. That is, pre-email and pre-crackberry and pre-mainstream internet in the workplace. So, tailing four female executives prior to the electronic revolution is dated at best. I'd like to see this topic revisited, and I wonder if there are other books on the subject that have been written more recently???

That being said, let me briefly discuss the four women covered in the book.

I liked Frances Hesselbein...she treated people with respect, whether they were subordinates or equals. She didn't let work rule her life, she was very passionate about her job, she obviously loved what she did, and she was very obviously sincere and caring with every person she encountered. Her people skills were/are commendable. Total class act all the way around.

Barbara Grogan gave me the hives. Her unprofessional demeanor (hugging complete strangers at meetings, for instance) was appalling. I have zero respect for someone that acts like her. She sees it as being "friendly", I see it as potentially being perceived as "flirting". Oops. That'll cause her problems eventually if it hasn't all ready. Her showing up late to meetings and intentionally leaving early was annoying too...playing up that she is bigger than she really is. Total drama queen. She gives professional working women a bad name.

Nancy Badore was particularly offensive to me, seeing as how I am also a white collar female that has worked in the auto industry. She let meetings run over, had a blatant lack of respect for others. She seemed very arrogant. I can only hope she took a golden parachute years ago and is no longer contaminating Ford with her BS executive management "training". If her training was so effective, why is the company broke?

Dorothy Brunson was definitely the most interesting of the four. She had the most diverse range of skills, where one minute she's a deal-closer for her company, and the next she's in the nuts-and-bolts financial reports. She has a lot of guts and ambition, and is breaking ground but doing it in a way that isn't offensive like Grogan. She also has to deal with a wide range of personalities, from evangelical leaders to millionaire executives. At the same time, she seems to have stayed relatively grounded and is not flaunting her abilities or her own wealth.

[Rossana Medina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro sin adornos, describe el contexto empresarial en torno a cuatro mujeres, en ramos distintos de la economía estadounidense, en el contexto del final de la década de los años ochenta. Con procedimientos muy distintos a nuestra actualidad, tiene un aporte interesantísimo, los principios que tienen este grupo de mujeres y sus formas de actuar, de acuerdo a su modo de ver la vida. Francis Hesselbein, Barbara Grogan, Nancy Badore y Dorothy Brunson, a través de las líneas escritas por Sally Helgesen me invitan a querer saber más de las mujeres y el liderazgo en el siglo XXI.
Además a través de las referencias podemos encontrar otros referentes femeninos en distintas áreas.

[Katerina Molchanova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was written in 1990, but idea and principles are pretty modern now as well. The field studies are read as fascinating novel... Minus one star for conclusion and summary sections: it's too vegie and super weird. But given that it's the first book written on the subject, still pretty good research.

[Wordwizard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up when someone at NYU was getting rid of a bunch of books and finally read it. The actual content isn't anything new--I've read Brene Brown's books, which go far beyond this in the "strict chains of command that are about enforcing status and distance aren't actually productive and people would rather work in places that treat them as human beings," and all that. Mostly what I read it for is the fact that it was published in 1990. The way work works has changed a lot in the last 30 years!

- Multiple women profiled in the book made a point of their organizations replying to mail within three days. (Three whole days!) And of course, it's all physical mail.
- One woman has a cell phone in her car and took a meeting in a parking lot after a parent-teacher conference ran long. Ah, the ways of the future. :)
- These people have SO MANY PHONE CALLS. It stresses me out just reading about it. Most of it is the kind of short thing that now, at least where I work, is settled by IM--"I'd like to chat about this, let me know when you have time"--or in a short email. But GAH. PHONES.
- So much scheduling and comparing calendars with secretaries and trying various systems to see what works best. Google Calendar and equivalents really changed that part of work.
- I am pretty sure none of the executives in the book has a computer in her office. There's not a ton of description, but the book touches on piles of paper and magazines and books that people have but never mentions computers. Similarly, there's clearly *physical* mail rather than email. There's a reference to things being typed, but usually by secretaries. I imagine they had word processors at this point, not typewriters, or *maybe* computers--but it doesn't seem like that was something the executive did herself at this point. There are discussions of sales projections but no one seems to open up Excel and look at a spreadsheet on a computer. I suspect a lot of the phone and meeting time is now email time, because those communications now take place online.

There IS an interesting thing at the beginning where Helgesen compares the women in her book to male executives in a 1968 study. As one woman in the book put it, women "get pleasure from the actual doing of it, rather than from the abstract notion of getting it done." Is that not true for everyone? Relief from the anxiety of having a task undone is not enough to make a job worthwhile if actually doing the task is also terribly unpleasant. I'd rather enjoy how I spend my time *and* be glad I finished something than have a life of dread broken by lessened dread. Maybe for some people the dopamine hit of completion is a LOT bigger? Orders of magnitude bigger?

There's also a bit about how a previous book about women in the work place said that "Seeing a career 'as personal growth, as self-fulfillment, as satisfaction, as making a contribution to others, as doing what one wants to do,' women lack men's focus on the all-important question, 'What's in it for me?'" and I have to say that BAFFLES me. What else is there to be 'in it for you' than satisfaction and usefulness? Money, sure, you want to be able to live well and to have the recognition aspect of it--but since this is a book about work and not volunteering, that's probably a given. I suspect there's something else there that I don't quite get. Perhaps some power-over element that is utterly unappealing to me. I think there's been a cultural change away from that in general--and the places where it still is in place are getting more and more obviously toxic.

Anyway. Not news (anymore) but fun and quick to read.

[Thebruce1314 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is over 30 years old and yet (despite some outdated language/theories), the arguments Helgeson makes for inclusion and the need for inter connectedness remain as relevant as ever. How (why?) are we so slow to learn and adapt as a species?

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership (Hardcover)
by Sally Helgesen

[Laurie Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in the late 90s when I was in a graduate class about business organization - I liked it better than the other books we had to read...

[Claudia Q Whitehead · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book is outdated because it was written in the 90's, I still found some valuable lessons in regards to the way women lead. It is an easy read and it's great if you are starting to understand the role of leadership and how to empower your colleagues rather than manage them. One of my favorite quotes from the book is the following: "It's not hard work that wears you out, but the repression of your true personality, and I've found a way of working that does not demand that." -France Hesselbein

[Christy Sherrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

L.E.I. required reading.
It one of those books that you did know that the information was out there. And once you read it, your aware of these facts it help in you in life. Basically, it shows how women lead, in contrast it to how men lead. Unlike the title may suggest it is not a book putting one sex down or insisting on the unhealthy domination of another. Just fax that potentially can empower the human race to lead in way that lead to less waste.

[Nojood Alsudairi · Rating 5 out of 5]

You want to be a leader, woman? This is your book.

[AAUW · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As a college intern, I was attracted to this book because I really want to learn about the leadership experiences of these specific women.” - Michelle

[Anastasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good and valuable descriptions of a day in the life of a female business leader. The analysis itself is a bit outdated however.