In How Women Lead, Sharon Hadary and Laura Henderson share what they learned from rigorous and extensive research to identify what they characterize as “eight essential strategies successful women know.” They devote a separate chapter to each strategy and provide a thorough explanation of what to do and how to do it. Here’s the list:

1. Empower the Woman Leader Within: Success begins with empowering the woman within by recognizing, valuing, and practicing the leadership strengths that you as a woman bring to business.

2. Own Your Destiny: Define success in your own terms based on your values, passions, and vision.

3. Be the Architect of Your Career: Acquire the credentials for success.

4. Advocate Unabashedly for Yourself: Be your own best advocate.

5. Translate the Stories That Numbers Tell to Drive Strategic Results: Set a high priority on developing financial acumen.

6. Create Exceptional Teams: Leaders mobilize exceptional teams to achieve visionary goals.

7. Nurture Your Greatest Asset: You: You are your own greatest asset. You need the tools to transform your mindset from that elusive concept of balance to skillfully integrate your professional and personal life.

8. Turn Possibilities into Reality: Make a difference but also have fun and help others to do so.

Hadary and Henderson feature 15 of the women whom they interviewed, all of whom “refused to wait for the system to fix itself,” achieved breakthrough success, and “took time out from their busy schedules to talk with us about what they had learned about building a successful life, answer our follow-up questions, and cheer us on.”

This would be an excellent holiday, birthday, or graduation gift for young women in schools and colleges as well as for those only recently embarked on a business career. I think both female and male managers who supervise women in the business world also need to absorb and digest the information, insights, and advice that Sharon Hadary and Laura Henderson share in abundance.