How do women lead? Check the view from below.

Everyone knows women lead differently from men. Or do they? It's important to know as we train and mentor women for educational leadership. The conventional wisdom shows just part of the picture.

Quantitative gender studies in business give mixed results. In education, most studies have been qualitative, interviewing a few women in depth. The women describe their leadership as more collaborative, nurturing and empowering than that of the men around them.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Mary Clisbee, senior associate director of the Merrimack Educational Center in Chelmsford MA, said that matches her experience. Speaking at the University of Nebraska's Women in Educational Leadership conference in Lincoln in October 2003, she recalled her years in physical education as one of 20 women in a military university.

As a woman, she said her interests and experience were very different from that of men. "What we learned about was not the passion in my heart. They talked about winning and competition. I was interested in more transformative issues," she said.

Now she directs an educational collaborative that offers services from pre-kindergarten to special education for school districts not large enough to do everything alone. She leads 150 employees at six schools and manages a $7.5 million budget. She also trains aspiring principals.

Working toward an EdD in Leadership in Schooling at the University of Massachusetts--Lowell, she's researching how educational leaders' styles look from the outside.