Successful leaders align the four key factors.

Take four equilateral triangles all the same size, put them edge to edge to form a solid four-sided figure and you've got a tetrahedron--one of the most balanced, stable figures in geometry.

If you use triangles of different shapes and sizes, the parts won't fit and the whole thing may collapse. Forcing them together when one triangle is out of whack warps all the others.

Leadership is like that, according to a new model developed by Dr. Genevieve Brown and Dr. Beverly Irby at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville TX. Leadership succeeds only when beliefs, behaviors, the organizational culture and external forces fit together like the faces of a tetrahedron. When they're out of sync, leadership usually fails. Women leaders are learning that lesson.

Brown and Irby are a two-woman feminist organization within their school's Educational Leadership and Counseling Department, which Brown chairs, while Irby is the dean who coordinates research at the center for research and doctoral studies within the department. For years they've blocked out regular time together on their calendars for research, with results evident in their long list of co-authored books and papers about women and leadership. In 1997 they started the on-line journal Advancing Women in Leadership, www.advancingwomen.com/awl/awl.html

Flexibility, patience and mutual support mark their feminist collaboration. They share power and credit, rotate leadership, reach goals by consensus, emphasize expertise rather than rank and value each other's contributions. Understanding spouses help; Brown's husband said of their working all afternoon and into the night on the Fourth of July, "I decided either you like it or you're real sick."

They've spent 12 years developing and testing their tetrahedral leadership theory, which offers a new way to frame success and failure. Old leadership theories, based on male corporate and military models, ignore women's voices and values. Neither reflecting best school practice nor speaking to all learners, the old theories promote old stereotypes and perpetuate barriers to women.

Theories that discuss the leader out of context are especially hard on women. "Susan" was an outstanding teacher and successful assistant principal who moved to an urban middle school. By the end of her first semester she felt defeated, overwhelmed and demoralized. She questioned her leadership style, once effective but now failing. Believing that her actions alone caused the problems in the middle school, she was assuming the total responsibility.