our domestic lives reflect the major trend that dominates the consumer marketplace today: an ever-increasing emphasis on variety and choice. ... we find ourselves inventing our lives as we go along, improvising in an effort to take advantage of the bewildering range of choices that we face.
Sally Helgesenwork is elevated by our daily environment into something that is appropriately done everywhere and at every conceivable moment.
Sally HelgesenTop-down leaders, by withholding power from those in the ranks, deprive them of the ability to use the expertise and information vested in them to respond directly and with speed to customer concerns.
Sally HelgesenAs women's leadership qualities come to play a more dominant role in the public sphere, their particular aptitudes for long-term negotiating, analytic listening, and creating an ambiance in which people work with zest and spirit will help reconcile the split between the ideals of being efficient and being humane. This integration of female values is already producing a more collaborative kind of leadership, and changing the very ideal of what strong leadership actually is.
Sally HelgesenWhat business needs now is exactly what women are able to provide, and at the very time when women are surging into the work force. But perhaps even more important than work force numbers is the fact that women - who began this sweeping entry in the mid-seventies - are just now beginning to assume positions of leadership, which give them the scope to create and reinforce the trends toward change. The confluence is fortunate, an alignment that gives women unique opportunities to assist in the continuing transformation of the workplace.
Sally Helgesenwomen, when describing their roles in their organizations, usually referred to themselves as being in the middle of things. Not at the top, but in the center; not reaching down, but reaching out.
Sally HelgesenThe very technologies that were supposed to free up our time seem instead to be consuming it, tacking hours onto our already extended days. The very interconnectedness of life in a global networked economy that creates so many opportunities also makes all our decisions more complex, crucial, even fragile.
Sally Helgesen