Here is an article written by Margaret Heffernan for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) In decades of analyzing exceptional leadership, John Zenger and Joseph Folkman have identified 16 traits required for success. These include integrity, initiative, self-development, problem solving and a drive for results. Zenger and Folkman have made their names and their business by designing powerful tools to test for these qualities and to develop them in high potential executives. That’s given them the data to analyze where the qualities are most likely to be found. With regards to the differences in effectiveness between male and female leaders, the results were striking: Women outscore men in leadership effectiveness.

Dr. Jack Zenger argues that this is due primarily to a change in leadership styles. Moving from a command-and-control style of leadership to a more collaborative model plays, he argues, to women’s strengths. Women are better listeners, better at building relationships and more collaborative and that, he argues, makes them better adapted to the demands of modern leadership. For that reason, Zenger concludes, there is no good reason not to promote women.

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Margaret Heffernan has been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom. A speaker and writer, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book 2011. Visit her on www.MHeffernan.com. To read other of her articles, please click here.