Sister Cities

In this age of economic distress and emotional despair, leaders need to demonstrate more strength and compassion than ever before. As company executives work to balance hard-line authority with softer initiatives, women are rising to the top as humane bosses with winning principles.

In conjunction with Neuberger Berman LLC, Fast Company sought out several powerful female leaders for our recent Women in Charge events in Houston, San Francisco, and Boston. In three roundtable forums, we asked women ranging from author, professor, and political commentator Susan Estrich to astronaut, doctor, and chemical engineer Mae C. Jemison to share their thoughts on leadership, crisis, and mentoring.

Here, our distinguished panel answers questions about compassionate leadership for merciless times. Read their thoughts below, then add your own impressions to Sound Off below.

What is the best thing about exercising power? The worst?

Heidi Schneider: The best thing about power is the ability to institute change. The problem with power is being accessible to more and more people but having less and less time to spend with each one. That's the challenge of having power: How do I spread myself among all those people and make them feel like I'm paying attention to them and understanding what they need?

Susan Estrich: For me, the best thing about having power is standing up to make something happen. You can literally raise your voice, rope in a couple of friends, and make a difference.

That's the approach I took toward Al Gore during his presidential campaign. I decided to confront him because he had no women working on the campaign.

The minute I realized that I had the stomach to do it, I got results: a half-dozen women were hired inside of a week. I love power. I like making a difference. But power often involves conflict. And conflict, for me, often involves a stomachache. The first lesson I learned as a leader was that I must be willing to let people be mad at me. It was an incredibly important decision to not care whether they liked me anymore.

Bobbi Silten: The best thing about power is that when you know that you have it, you can use it when you need to. You don't need to fight if you're in a position of power.

Unfortunately, some people become addicted to power and think it is going to last forever. I see too many people using their title to wield influence because their box is above someone else's box on the org chart. That's not what it's about. It's about demonstrating leadership so that no matter where you go, people will want to follow.

Chip Conley: One of the few things that's portable in life is your integrity. Your spot on the organizational chart isn't necessarily portable. Your paycheck isn't portable. But your character is.

So my favorite thing about power is that you have a bully pulpit you can use to enforce your values. Leaders can embrace their values in the workplace and make a difference. And that's new. Twenty or 30 years ago, you checked your personality and your values at the door.

Liz Dolan: I was a little intimidated when I first got the job as global marketing director at Nike because, all of a sudden, I was leading a department with a $400 million budget. I almost didn't want to be in charge of such an astounding amount of money. But then I realized the very powerful link between money and influence. And I really got to like the idea that I could carve out relatively small amounts of money in order to do things that I personally believed in.

I decided to start a flurry of advertising emphasizing women's sports. That was just me deciding what I wanted to do with my own damn money. And I really loved that. When I was new on the job, I would look over my shoulder and wonder, "Who do I have to ask about this?" Then I realized, nobody! The part of my job I liked the least was falling into a power stalemate where, at a certain point in a business discussion, you've talked and talked and talked, and somebody just has to make the call.

Once, I had a difference of opinion about Nike's strategy for a particular project with the employee who headed that project. And at the end of our tenth conversation, he finally said, "Well, Liz, I guess you and I just disagree."

That was the moment of truth for me as his boss because I thought, "Okay, we just disagree. Does that mean I fold? Or do I just say my vote counts more than yours?" Ultimately, I did say, "You're right, we disagree, and so here's the way we're going to do it."