Sister Cities

Weddington: Many leaders achieve greatness because they have great timing. They're in the right place at the right time. That was not the case for me. I entered the workforce at a time when women were treated unequally and unfairly. It was difficult to become a female leader. So, for me, visibility became very important. There's a saying that goes, "It's not what you know that counts, it's who knows that you know."

Keeth: Visibility definitely helped me, but I don't think that I realized it at the time. There were several times, early in my career, when a colleague had to leave the office at a crucial time. Under deadline pressure, I stepped in and did the job. That put the spotlight on me. I saw what needed to be done and noticed that nobody else seemed to be doing it, so I just did it. Even failure is better than doing nothing at all.

Rubin: Women don't take themselves seriously enough. We don't realize that we can change the world. We see bosses execute a task and think that we can't do it. I try to be very serious about who I am and what I can and want to do. And then I never back down from that, ever.

Silten: I make sure that I value good work, regardless of whether it comes from a man or a woman. As a leader, it's important that you value all of your team members for what they bring to the party as individuals. Value the strengths of each individual, and make sure that each person on your team feels that you value him or her.

At the same time, if I see a female colleague doing something that I think is detrimental to her career, I'll pull her aside and say, "Hey, here's something that I've observed, and here's something that I think you can learn." If I see a woman making a mistake that I made for many years, I'll tell her about it and suggest a change.

It's hard. But I don't think anything about leadership is easy. Sometimes as leaders, you have to create harmony. You have to be the intuitive person.

What would you like your legacy to be?

Silten: When I leave my organization, I hope to leave behind a great group of women leaders.

Conley: Our managers do an exercise called "pass the photos." We have 850 employees in the company including housekeepers, bartenders, and a collection of hourly employees. We each take a photo out of a collection of the line-level people and pass it around the circle of senior managers. When the music stops, each manager has to look at the photo and ask, "What's the most important thing to this person in his or her job today? How could I be a better leader of this person? How can I help them be more effective and satisfied?"

I'd like to leave behind a level of empathy that will allow leaders to get under the surface -- to get inside the heads and hearts of their people.

Estrich: I'd like to leave people feeling that they have the power to make a difference. I'd like other women to know that exercising power is meaningful and satisfying. I'd also like them to know the great pleasures of working collaboratively.

The things I've done best in my life, I've done with one or more people. There's not an institution in America that can't be changed by three women who are willing to work together and risk it all to make a difference.

I want to be one of those three. I'm in. Now, who else has the guts and the spirit to make change -- together?

Biro: Women need to get more hysterical. We need to be our own advocates, because it's hard to fight tradition. And we drop out too often when we don't think we can win. Women have incredible attributes that make them quite unique and quite charismatic. But women absolutely need special advocacy, or they will not advance, because business unconsciously discriminates. I hope I can contribute to the solution, not the problem, of discrimination against women leaders.

Mary Lou Quinlan interviews a participant at Boston's Women in Charge event. Photos by Rebecca Rees

What advice would you pass on to women leaders starting out today?

Abrashoff: Five months ago, I traveled to Aberdeen, Scotland to do some work with British Petroleum. I worked with one of the most senior women at the company. She had a job no woman had ever had before: She was in charge of all the pipelines for all of British Petroleum and she called herself the "Pipeline Princess." When they gave her this job, they gave her a coach who told her how she was supposed to act. And she was absolutely miserable: She was making all the wrong decisions; she hated herself. After three months, she fired her coach and said, "I'm going to be the person that I want to be, instead of the person that British Petroleum says I should be."