In the wake of research from Harvard Business Review, which discovered that women make better leaders in times of crisis, Real Leaders has highlighted some leadership lessons from female founders and CEOs who are at the top of their game.

1. Mary Barra / CEO, General Motors

Quote: “It’s okay to admit what you don’t know. It’s okay to ask for help. And it’s more than okay to listen to the people you lead — in fact, it’s essential.”

Why it works: Research by leadership development experts, Zenger Folkman, suggests that leaders who exhibit a preference for listening are rated as significantly more effective than those who spend most of their time talking.

Pro tip: According to “The 11 Laws of Likability” by Michelle Tillis Lederman, effective listening is the single most powerful tool for building and maintaining a climate of trust and collaboration.

DO

• Maintain eye contact and focus on the speaker
• Limit your talking
• Confirm understanding, paraphrase, ask questions
• Give non-verbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile)
• Manage your emotions

DON’T

• Interrupt or finish someone’s sentences
• Assume you’re being attacked
• Use condescending or aggressive language
• Listen with biases or appear closed to new ideas
• Jump to conclusions

2. Susan Wojcicki / CEO, YouTube

Quote: “Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way, in a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it; it’s perfect. You’ll love it.’ Opportunities — the good ones — are messy, confusing, and hard to recognize. They’re risky. They challenge you.”

Why it works: A successful leader should distinguish the difference between an opportunity that is worth seizing and could yield results, from an opportunity that isn’t aligned with the organization’s beliefs or will not benefit the business.

Pro tip: Smart Company recommends keeping up to date with industry trends and insights to stay ahead of the game by:

• Subscribing to relevant publications
• Setting Google Alerts for key industry terms
• Joining groups and associations within your niche
• Following other industry experts on social media

3. Ambika Singh / Founder & CEO, Armoire

Quote: “Recognizing how your employees work — and knowing that this takes individual attention — is important to being a successful leader.”

Why it works: Motivated employees are more likely to think creatively, go above and beyond, want to learn and grow, feel personally connected to the company, and ultimately drive the business forward.

Pro tip: Find out what kind of environment your employees thrive in by asking your

employees these three questions:

• What is your favorite project you’ve ever worked on, and what made it your favorite?
• What was the best team you were ever a part of and what made it the best?
• Which of your former bosses brought out the best in you? What did

they do, or not do, that you appreciated?

4. Karen Young / Founder, Oui the People

Quote: “The simplest time management skill as an entrepreneur comes down to understanding what’s most important and knowing that it can change by the day or by the hour.”

Why it works: Learning how to manage your time effectively can help you feel more relaxed,

focused, and in control.

Pro tip: Too many emails? A study found that one in three office workers suffers from

email-related stress. Practice the “4 Ds” to avoid an anxiety-inducing email inbox:

• Delete — old emails, emails with no value, spam, etc. can all be deleted.
• Do — complete any action from an email that is urgent or where the task can be completed quickly.
• Delegate — if the email can be better dealt with by someone else, delegate it.
• Defer — set aside time later to respond to emails that may take longer to deal with.

5. Rowena Everson / Former CEO, Standard Chartered

Quote: “I like to find smart, capable people and set them up for success by giving them the information, tools, and connections they need. I’m clear in my expectations and value regular feedback. If I’m micromanaging, that’s usually a bad sign.”

Why it works: Micromanagement kills creativity, breeds mistrust, causes undue stress, and can demoralize your team. Setting clear expectations and offering timely feedback can make the world of a difference.

Pro tip: Tell your team what you want them to strive for — not how you expect them to do

it — by clarifying the following:

• What you’re hoping to achieve
• A time frame for the task to be completed
• How success will be measured
• How often you will be checking in with them

6. Tyler Haney / Founder, Outdoor Voices

Quote: “You need to have unbound enthusiasm for what you’re building. Energy is contagious, so your team and everyone you interact with feels it.”

Why it works: Leading by example doesn’t start and end with work performance; it comes down to the way you talk about your work and the emotions you express too. If negativity breeds negativity, the opposite is also true.

Pro tip: Founder of Small Business Trends, Anita Campbell, shares three quick ways to spread enthusiasm and inject positive energy into your day-to-day leadership:

• Appeal to passions. Try to find out what each person on your team is passionate about and what motivates them.
• Celebrate accomplishments. Nothing breeds success like an environment of success, so celebrate team and individual successes no matter how small.
• Do something unexpected. Surprise your team with something nice, from bonuses to an afternoon off or an early finish.

7. Whitney Wolfe Herd / Founder & CEO, Bumble

Quote: “When you accept that failure is a good thing, it can actually be a huge propeller toward success.”

Why it works: Failing once, twice, or even hundreds of times doesn’t mean you’ve hit the end of the road — it means you’re one step closer to success. These experiences give us an opportunity to learn, find new solutions, and grow as individuals.

Pro tip: The author of Enlightened Entrepreneurship, Chris Myers, recommends these

three tips for accepting, processing, and learning from failure:

• Don’t worry about what people may think; everyone is too preoccupied with their own lives to notice.
• Instead of dwelling on the negatives, learn from the experience and use it as an opportunity to grow.
• Accept that failure is part of the journey and keep moving forward; it is impossible for you to really fail.

Women who arrive at the top should be able to thrive at the top. But instead, they’re judged to be lucky to survive — even more so with pandemic pressures overwhelming their already busy family and professional lives. So what does it take for women to flourish in leadership roles today? These two female CEOs, and one male, demonstrate what impactful leadership looks like today.

1. Leading with Head and Heart

Sandra Fenwick / Former CEO of Boston Children’s Hospital

Fenwick led a team of 20,000 people dedicated to improving and advancing child health through their life-changing work in clinical care, biomedical research, medical education, and community engagement. She retired in March of 2021. Here is her advice for navigating leadership as your best self on what she calls your “journey of significance.” 

Learn to Be a Learner 

Leading from your best self is about what you do and how you do it. The three Cs are a great inner compass: curiosity, courage, and compassion. In my case, curiosity and courage make things better for people and patients. Doing it with caring and kindness and thinking about people is where compassion is essential. Either working with people or on behalf of people, it returns to using your head and heart. What you do and how you do it. 

Leading with compassion means caring about people, knowing them, their cares, awareness of human spirit, struggles, desires, their own goals. Then balancing the logic with the emotion. Thinking about how you can be a tough, hard businessperson but never forgetting the importance of the people you work with and the values that are part of those relationships. 

Doing things that improve the lives of people is what I love. I’m not a doctor. I decided not to go to medical school. I’m not a scientist, a researcher, so I’m not discovering things.

But I’ve always wanted to be in health care and help others. So it’s about doing it through others, enabling them to do their work, providing them with opportunities, supporting their work, supporting their development, providing them with the environment, the resources they need. So that has been my reward and my personal return: watching and seeing what can be done through other people. That is why people are such a part of my journey of significance. 

Align Best Self with Strategic Priorities 

I led a multidimensional turnaround at Boston Children’s, and one of my jobs was to set a strategy for a broken organization. We had to determine how to survive and thrive as an independent children’s hospital and one of the strong Harvard Medical School institutions. What needed to be done and in what order? 

The first thing I did was ask, “What do we have to do immediately?” I wrote this down on a piece of paper that I still keep under my phone: fix the finances; build a culture of trust, respect, and transparency; align the physicians and get them on board with our vision; create a strategy; fix the broken infrastructure; and communicate, communicate, communicate. I then walked down this list which included creating a culture of being the best place to work. I picked six things I needed to do immediately and got started. They’ve always been there for me. 

Don’t Go It Alone — Listen to Trusted Truth-Tellers 

Surround yourself with one or a couple of very trusted people who have your back, care about you, are loyal and dedicated to you as a person, but also are dedicated to the institution; they will tell you honestly how you are doing. Have somebody you trust explicitly; it could be a communications expert, general counsel, physician, or board member. When I’ve gotten into tough situations, I’ve leaned on all of them for different advice and perspective. It could be a piece of data, testing a different audience, gaining an unbiased opinion, and many other invaluable inputs. 

Remember Your Accolades 

Women like to ignore positive feedback, but when you learn you’ve done a good job, you need to hear it to know how others perceive your best self. So make that one of the practices and keep on doing it better. Ask for feedback, hear it holistically, and ask how to tweak it. Most of all: When you hear you did a good job, remember that you did! These are the best clues about you at your best.

2. No Time for Fear

Natalie Martinez / CEO, Strong Women Strong Girls (SWSG)

As with any exemplary organization, it starts with an exemplary leader. CEO Natalie Martinez directly ties her courageous actions to the young women who will ultimately benefit from the results. In fact, she doesn’t allow herself to miss an opportunity to exhibit the fortitude she has spent a lifetime molding. Here, she shares tips on how to take courageous actions. 

The Courage to Do Things Differently 

In any position I’ve ever been in, my approach is never to do things just because that’s how it’s been done in the past. We should always bring a fresh approach and question everything. No matter the job or who the people are above me, no matter if I’m the only Black person in the room, I’ve had to say to myself, “This is the right thing to do.” I’ve had to dig deep within my gut, stand on what I believe in, and move forward in that way. I’ve also had the courage to sit in rooms with people I find intimidating to me and who are not like me and advocate for the right thing to do. It’s not always something provocative like improving diversity in an organization. It can be as simple as saying no to spending budget on something that will not benefit our program marketing. To challenge the status quo, I’ve had to lean into my skills and abilities that are not stamped by education or approved by a certain title or role but rather that come naturally to who I am. 

Devise and Protect a Strategic Plan 

Throughout my career, I’ve learned I have the ability to see organizational structure and know what is needed to make things come together to be successful. For example, at the start of the COVIDd-19 pandemic, I knew that we needed to do a strategic plan instead of  waiting for the pandemic to be over and not surviving. Because we had a strategic plan, we could message our funders and community partners what we were doing, so it protected us during a tumultuous time.

Allow Your Personal Experiences to Guide You to a Greater Mission 

I represent African Americans. That’s the perspective I come from and the knowledge and culture I draw from — but it hasn’t always been easy to be a woman of color in any room. Whether in a boardroom, at a roundtable discussion with other professionals, or leading a team with diverse backgrounds, I’ve often found myself in the minority. I’ve had to find the courage to be my authentic self and stand up for what I believe in. I must push program managers when they want to do curriculum a certain kind of way, push college mentors to bring everything they are doing back to the girls even though there is a social justice element to our work. I’ve gone through what these girls are going through, and I have that perspective. You don’t have to be from the background I came from to possess this ability. Recognizing your circumstances is key to it all. How do you use that thing in your toolbox? I look at the things in my toolbox, the grit that comes from being Natalie, and its pieces in my toolbox. At the end of the day, you must have a winning attitude. 

Keep Fighting Obstacles 

Less than 10% of fundraised dollars go to nonprofits created for people of color, and less than 1%  goes to nonprofits run by women of color. Black-led organizations have unrestricted net assets that are 76% smaller than their White-led counterparts. This gap in support for Black-led led organizations is the adversity that matters the most to the success of my organization. Being a woman of color and having to fundraise in Boston, where there is a ton of old money and old boys’ networks, has been excruciating. I came to my position with fundraising experience, but I didn’t have access to the philanthropic network that has been in place in the city for decades. I am a leader of a nonprofit that desperately needs operating dollars. The truth is, securing general operating support is all about establishing a trust relationship with the company or foundation, and this requires faith in leadership. This, for me, is funders saying, “I trust you as the leader to do whatever you need with these dollars.” To break through the bias about my identity and earn the faith of donors is a challenge I regularly face as I lead SWSG. I must keep fighting against these barriers to demonstrate that our organization is trustworthy and viable, and able to make an impact for the girls and women we serve. We do make an impact, and we will continue to!

3. Living and Leading Diversity

Dan Helfrich / chairman and CEO of Deloitte Consulting, US

Helfrich leads a team of more than 70,000 professionals who help clients solve their most complex problems. He is also a proponent of creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking. His values and behaviors started young, which he can clearly trace, as he states in this advisory to you. 

Leverage Your Personal Story to Embrace Diversity 

It comes from early in life. I came from a diverse family, including three adopted siblings, one of whom is Black. It comes from a life of being on team sports, a total melting pot of socioeconomics, class, personality, characteristics. I’ve been around a diverse range of people my whole life and have always seen teams that perform best when the unique aspects of all people are harnessed. As I began my professional life, I noticed professionally there were so many people mentoring and spending time with miniature versions of themselves. I found myself seeking completely different types of people and really benefiting as mentor and mentee in those two-way relationships. 

Recognize Where Others Are and Learn Their Stories 

Embrace your authentic self. Consider intention and ease. I have found in my own journey and in seeing others and helping others, particularly women, that the “ease” part is not easy. For many people, that is a practiced learned behavior versus something natural in many ways. It is revealed in the uniqueness of each individual’s — each woman’s — lived experience. Does it manifest itself in people, women, carrying challenges they have from a parenting standpoint? Sure. That is a common moment when women leaders are vulnerable about the pressures they feel to “do it all.” At times, the weight of that is impossible. But sometimes, we equate vulnerability and authenticity with motherhood at the expense of many other interesting things. In fact, I’ve had a couple of moments stick out to me where a woman has spoken out about the decision not to have children or not to be married and articulate the pressures that creates for them. I’ve heard people talk about the cultural nuances, from people of Asian heritage where cultural nuances around gender and the struggles they have had to be authentic to their cultural heritage while being role models for the type of leader they want to be with our culture at Deloitte and societal culture in the United States. 

Teach Allyship 

I do consider myself an ally. I don’t use the word often to describe myself. I deeply believe in the concept of allyship. I don’t use the word a lot myself because I believe it’s my job to be an ally for all. Am I an ally for women? Absolutely. Black people? Absolutely. LGBTQ members of my team? Absolutely. Particularly as a White male, particularly a White male in power, you are both setting a model and an expectation for the intentionality of supporting those different from you. If that intentionality is associated with allyship, that resonates with me. I tell our people all the time that it is not just OK to be a good person as it relates to diversity and inclusion. Sometimes I talk to people. What are you doing to move the needle? I hear: “I have great values.” “I have lots of friends who are women … gay…” “I make all my decisions in an inclusive way.” My powerful statement is that it is insufficient. There must be everyday intentionality to choices that drive equity, given that many people start from positions of nonequity. It is our role to lift them. 

Consciously Develop Your Skills as an Inclusive Leader 

Without question, read, listen, and follow the most diverse set of perspectives as possible and spend time with individuals inside and outside of work that are as diverse as possible. To me, it’s all about agile, dynamic leadership to the situation and the moment in society and the company. One of the best ways to make sure you don’t become a leader in a castle who has lost perspective in the world, or a leader in a castle surrounded by other leaders who have many of the same attributes as yourself, is by choosing intentionally to spend your time with as diverse an array of people as possible.

Everywhere you look these days, companies, governments, and communities are talking about ‘better business,’ what it means, who it affects, and why it’s relevant. One example that shows this ethos in action is TRANSFORM — a unique joint initiative between Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and EY.

The initiative supports social entrepreneurs in South Asia and Africa to improve the lives of low-income households. Driven by the UN SDGs, in particular no.17, “partnerships for the goals,” it follows the mantra that no other UN SDG is possible without it – which is why it is so key for sustainable progression. Here are our five major learnings for building a successful public-private partnership.

1.    The Holy Trinity: 3 core organizations are the perfect balance

These core organizations should be responsible for the overriding vision and direction of the partnership and the relationships with suppliers, enterprises, and stakeholders. A leaner central body will strengthen the management of potentially conflicting processes, rules, and requirements all partnerships undoubtedly face.

2.    Start small

A committed group of kick-starters allows the core organizations to form trusted relationships, stress-test, and empower the initiative. Avoid getting overexcited about the PR – the successes built from a tight-knit foundation will speak for themselves. 

3.    Define a shared purpose

Ask yourself, where do the common values between the core organizations lie? How do you ensure this forms the foundation for a specific partnership goal? Remember, the optimal point you’re trying to hit is a vision with enough specificity that the whole team is clear and aligned while allowing enough room to explore different avenues and respond to crises.

4.    The Compatibility Test

Testing your area of collaboration helps build a pipeline by reviewing real projects and finding out where to set your boundaries. This is where reality starts to sink in, and the funding prospects are front and center of the conversation. Remember, if you encounter difficulties with the projects, you can always return to the mapping stage and redefine the shared values.

5.    Ground rules: balancing everyone’s needs

Make sure you prioritize the necessary requirements for each organization. Creating contractual templates means you’ll be best placed to deal with even the most unprecedented of events – for TRANSFORM, this meant a well-established blueprint for a rapid Covid-19 response. The model built on the collaboration’s firm relationships and frameworks meant that Unilever and the FCDO could launch the Hygiene & Behavior Change Coalition (HBCC), which provided funding, technical assistance, and hygiene products to over 20 NGOs in 2020.

TRANSFORM has shown that building a successful public-private partnership takes time, commitment, and resilience. The same is true of reaching the SDGs; no one organization can do it alone. We wanted to put the needs of society at the heart of our mission — and in the hands of some of the most exciting social entrepreneurs. We have shown that combining market-based ingenuity with the unique capabilities of business and government can offer a pathway to accelerated progress. If that’s not better business, I’m not sure what is.

For many years, I had been searching for feedback and insight from a group of impact leaders.

Other CEO support groups I had joined had a completely different set of motivations and perspectives on leadership and success. Being an impact leader comes with its own unique set of challenges. It’s hard to manage a company with both profit and purpose embedded at its center because there’s a natural friction between them, almost by design.

One of the highlights within my Real Leaders Impact Collaborative group has been the discussion around culture and people. Many of my peers have young, mission-driven staff that desire better, flourishing communities and a healthier planet. Likewise, as a CEO, these priorities are things I aspire toward too. It’s one thing to advertise that you’re a B Corporation and are mission-driven, but the big challenge is always how to balance that with your business priorities. Collaborating with CEOs who find themselves in the same situation can help unlock solutions that may otherwise seem impossible. These suggestions don’t always offer an instant fix but sometimes show a path toward a future solution that you can begin working on now.

One example is a recent discussion we had on financing and capital and voting with your dollars to create positive social change. In theory, this idea is a no-brainer, but in practice, it’s tough.

I had come away from a staff meeting the week before where I’d expressed my dissatisfaction that our company 401ks might be better positioned in support of social impact investing opportunities and, in so doing, become better aligned with our company and staff values. Up to that point, our 401k policies had been done through a single company, with a very generic approach that recommended only one fund for us. By seeking social impact-aligned 401k funds, we furthered our mission as an impact company, but more importantly, we had the opportunity to educate our staff about the social power of their dollars.

The word “collaboration” was used freely many years ago to signal a new way of doing business, where like-minded companies and individuals would combine forces to magnify their social impact. It was a new idea that broke previous business rules focused solely on competition. There’s a risk that as collaboration becomes the norm, competition between impact companies again becomes the dominant factor in a crowded market of those vying for social impact consumer spending. There will always be some level of healthy competition between similar brands, but what I see at every event I attend is a sea of nodding heads when the speaker on stage talks about the importance and opportunities of embedding social impact in your business. This tells me that a common, unifying idea has the potential to create more cooperation and joint agendas rather than competition. People are ready to listen and entertain ideas like never before. We should find strength in that because working together can help open up the emerging social impact market to new opportunities for all of us.