Connective leadership helps women CEOs achieve goals.(chief executive officers)

Once upon a time women were supposed to lead like men. More recently, women's allegedly more relational styles have been called a leadership advantage, which males are learning in training programs.

Leadership is more complicated than that, Sarah Smith-Orr said in her six-hour workshop "The CEO as Connective Leader," a part of the National Institute for Leadership Development (NILD) CEO Issues Forum in Sedona AZ in January 2005.

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Using Jean Lipman-Blumen's connective leadership model and Achieving Styles Inventory, she led participants through a repertoire of styles they'll need for different projects and environments.

Old styles no longer suffice. "We've seen the evidence of command-and-control, which as a society we've outgrown," she told WIHE. That may suit isolated tribal areas, but the rest of us have grown too interdependent to follow one fearless leader without question.

Technology has multiplied connections and erased boundaries. The people of the world are more interdependent than ever before. At the same time, thirst for independence has dissolved the Soviet Union and generated emerging nations. In the broadest sense of diversity, groups and individuals claim the right to be themselves.

We're moving into an era of shifting alliances around fast-changing goals. Flexible organizations, short-term coalitions and horizontal connections mark this new "connective" era. Tension between interdependence and diversity challenges 21st century leaders. To accomplish their goals requires getting people who see themselves as different to work constructively in relationships.