As we're heading into 2009 it appears that females leaders are finally becoming accepted--it's about time. Whether it's Hilary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice or Margaret Thatcher, it's clear that female leadership is here to stay. I’m always looking to learn more about women and how they approach and respond to leadership.The power of estrogen is not confined to politics either. Look around and you'll see female leaders everywhere and it's only going to continue to grow. 57% of all college graduates are women and more than half of National Merit Scholars are females.

I read an article in Fortune (http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/09/news/economy/women.power.fortune/index.h...) about how women are redefining the issue of power. The author, Anne Fisher, argued that the traditional male style of leadership doesn’t appeal to women. The command & control style is not only rejected by most women, but I find that most men reject it also.

The article details a concept called “the Thin Pink Line” where women executives carefully balance the perceptions of followers that they may be either too bitchy or too girly. Women walk a fine line, but many people make the mistake of assigning the responsibility to women only. Why do only female leaders have to adhere to this balancing act? The fact is that both men and women executives have to create the balance between establishing high expectations and holding people their people to those standards of performance while also creating a safe, nurturing, and supportive environment. Both men and women face the same challenges.

The Thin Pink Line is not really a line at all—it’s a continuum of leadership behaviors ranging from one extreme to the other. Depending on the situation and the intrinsic qualities of their workforce, the leader makes choices of how to act. Those choices determine the degree to which people follow the leader.

Developing leadership depends on building fundamental skills while recognizing individual nuances. What works for one executive probably won’t work for another. General skills such as strategic thinking, decision-making and judgment, and team building are required for every leader, but tapping into each executive’s unique strengths is just as important, if not more so. Effective leaders don’t try to be anybody else—they are just themselves, they’re authentic while setting performance targets and providing their people with the resources to achieve those goals. It’s less a matter of gender and more a matter of competence.