Women Lead The Way book

Just wanted to post some thoughts on Linda Tarr-Whelan's book. Overall I thought it was a very good read although she did bloviate quite a bit, in spite of which she made some saliant and interesting points about how the times are changing and what trends look to be sculpting the future. Most of all I like her discussion on the win-win mindset that does seem to be a bit more prevalent in a female leadership style (did she study Steven Covey's, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" here?). I liked most of all her chapter on "Lifting as we climb" and I believe this win-win mindest and lifting as we climb applies to all people and transcends gender in leadership to the whole population. Her quoting of that African proverb was great, which bears repeating here, "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." I think that really sums it all up. What better way to say it?

It was also interesting seeing some of the statistics she cites in the book for example that men barely make up a majority of the work force now and that in the future white males will only account for 15% of the new entrants in the work force. The other trends we've studied in this course put all this in a neat framework to understand, especially when coupled with other statistics on how many men compared to women are pursuing education and advanced degrees.

Her emphasis on the female leadership trait of collaboration, consensus and communication I think is generally more correct than not, it isn't to say men cannot be this way or that women cannot; but I would agree that it seems more common among females than males.

Some of her data and facts I'd like to see contrasted to other data. For example, her info on her home state of South Carolina and the terrible rates of social and health problems, economic problems there, etc and so forth are compelling, however, she assigns a lot of this to the fact that that particular state has few women in leadership positions, and I would like to see that compared with other states social/economic problems and compared with how many or what percent of women are in leadership roles or not. It would be interesting to see if it has as much to do with lack of female leadership roles as it does the legacy of other economic, demographic, education, financial and on and on kinds of trends and factors rather than solely gender leadership.