CIOZone.com - Professional Network for CIOs and IT Professionals

A new management model, based on a more centered approach to leadership, helps women (and men) to succeed. Here's how it works.

Also See:
Stopping The Female Brain Drain
How To Be A Better Leader
Join The CIOZone's Women in IT Group

By Ellen Pearlman

Strategic Thinkers:
Joanna Barsh, Susie Cranston and Rebecca Craske

Credentials:
The authors all work for McKinsey & Co. Barsh is a director in the New York office; Craske is an associate principal in New York; Cranston is a consultant in the San Francisco office.
Big Idea:
A new "centered" approach to leadership can help women become more effective leaders

Article:
"Centered Leadership: How talented women thrive," published by The McKinsey Quarterly, September 2008.

Four years ago, McKinsey & Co. set out to help professional women at the firm and elsewhere become more successful. They knew that there was a need for better leaders and they reasoned that if they could help younger women reach the top it would benefit both the women and their organization.

So they created the McKinsey Leadership Project to help them learn what drives and sustains women leaders. Three McKinsey women (authors of "Centered Leadership") interviewed more than 85 women around the world, and a few men, who were successful in various industries. From this research came a model called centered leadership, based on these five interrelated attributes:

• Meaning. Finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of an inspiring purpose.


• Managing energy. Knowing where your energy comes from, where it goes, and how you can manage it.


• Positive framing. Adopting a more constructive way to view your world even when things go wrong.


• Connecting. Identifying who can help you grow and build stronger relationships.


• Engaging. Finding your voice, becoming self-reliant and confident by accepting opportunities and the risks they bring.

Next: How It Works