The value women place on relationships has increasing marketplace value. Changes in the nature of technology have made relationships — with customers, clients, suppliers, competitors, shareholders, and the community as well as within the organization itself — a far more vital resource for organizations than in years past. Twenty years ago, relationships were considered the soft stuff, dismissed as the province of “human resource weenies” by those who valued strategic toughness. Today, they are more likely to be seen as essential to innovation, teamwork, customer satisfaction, talent retention, and the transmission of embodied wisdom.
In A Whole New Mind, author Daniel Pink describes why the changing nature of work has made relationships more important. He notes that the industrial and information ages valued analytic skills and the ability to follow the kind of predefined rules that are enshrined in procedural manuals or software code. Attention to these rules enabled people in organizations to wring value from the production of replicable products.
Pink shows how our present “conceptual age” locates value in creativity, which is enhanced when empathy and collaboration are present. He therefore predicts that an ability to read and interpret “the subtleties of human interaction” will emerge as the key leadership competency in the years ahead. Recognizing this should give women greater confidence in the value of their capacity for broad-spectrum notice. This fundamental component of the female vision should serve them well in the years ahead.
This post was excerpted from The Female Vision, published by Berrett-Kohler Publishers, June 2010.
Sally Helgesen is the author of five books, including the classic best-seller, The Female Advantage, celebrating its 20th year in print, and The Web of Inclusion, described by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership ever published. She is an international speaker and groundbreaking thinker on leadership and organizations.
Julie Johnson, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, is considered to be one of America’s most experienced and well respected coaches. She has coached hundreds of senior executives in blue chip companies and has worked with many of the most successful women in the Fortune 500. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review as well as in the noted book, Coaching for Leadership.
