It is time for a new paradigm of leadership

We are entering into a new era that requires a different kind of leadership – leadership that is transparent, that builds trust, that builds collaborative relationships. Women will bring their natural gifts of leadership to this time of transition and will bring out the feminine. Men will learn to use their feminine side more than ever and will further the develop the desire to be in this collaborative culture shift.

Lions and tigers and bears – oh my!

With only six CEO’s in the Fortune 100 and a paltry 15 in the Fortune 500, we might be inclined to believe that getting past the glass ceiling is a task beyond most women leaders. However, like the characters in the Wizard of Oz, we may find that it is our own limited thinking that contributes to keeping us from the top positions.

We are able to define in great detail what keeps us as women from ascending to the highest leadership positions in Corporate America or in political leadership for that matter. We are able to identify the glass ceiling, the marble ceiling, the concrete ceiling, the glass cliff, the shattered cliff, the sticky floor and the labyrinth, to name a few of the most common terminologies.

We need to start having a very different conversation about women in leadership and that conversation needs to be had everywhere. It must be had within our own hearts and minds as well as with other women colleagues, with men, in businesses, in business schools, in any training programs, and in leadership programs. As women, we come to the leadership task with skills that are different than those that men bring. Women are natural relationship builders, women are focused and yet can multi-task, women are more collaborative, we want to win and have it be for the good of all, women are more careful risk takers and are willing to acknowledge that it takes a village. There is a lot for women to hang our hats on and to build confidence around.

On July 1, 2009, Ursula Burns will become the first African American CEO of a Fortune 500 company. It will also be the first woman to woman handover as Burns steps in after Anne Mulcahy steps down at Xerox. Mulcahy has been celebrated as the most successful female CEO to date, for her phenomenal turnaround of an ailing Xerox. This is a stellar example of how the tide is turning in the business world’s assessment of and response to female CEO’s as well as the beginning of what needs to become a broad trend: women supporting and hiring other women in business.

That women have not populated the highest positions in the landscape of business and political leadership is simply an historical fact. It is not a template for the future. As more women graduate in historically male dominated fields, more women will step into the leadership pipeline. With more female role-models to choose from, we no longer have to learn to lead from men and adopt the masculine style of leadership. We can be women and bring all of our natural and authentic skills to the job.

With Baby Boomers retiring, the way business is being done is going through significant transformations and one of those will be the flood of gender-blind, color-blind, work/life-integration-embracing Generation Y workers. One inevitable result of this will be the dissolution of the Good Old Boy’s Network. Now is the time for women to step up to the challenge and be ready to be the leaders of today and tomorrow. Women bringing our skills to the leadership table will create the needed diversity to assure a successful future for all of us.