Once upon a time, the standard for excellence in the business world was established principally by men. And that almost inevitably meant that the attributes ascribed to the effective leader were “masculine.”

In recent decades, however, such antiquated assumptions have begun to give way to a more nuanced and, indeed, more accurate understanding of the qualities required in a leader. This important shift in both the ideology and the practice of leadership may be explained primarily by the rapidly rising numbers of women in key roles in business and government.

Indeed, as more women assume high-level roles in commerce and politics alike, they are redefining what it means to mentor, develop, and lead people and organizations. But what lessons, exactly, can be learned from women in leadership?

The Relational Model

The history of business and government has been largely shaped around an authoritarian, even autocratic, model of leadership. From CEOs to Presidents, to lead was to command, not to collaborate. To be an authority was to draw from wells of power and perhaps of fear to issue edicts that would be implemented without hesitation or questioning.

This was the model of the male titans of old: The Carnegies and Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts and the Duponts, and, yes, the Napoleons and Machiavellis.

With the ascendancy of women to the highest echelons of business and government, though, new standards and practices of leadership have emerged. The top-down approach characteristic of the more traditional and more “masculine” style has been replaced with a more “feminine” model that privileges relationship building and collaboration.

This shift from the command and enforce model to the listen and collaborate one has yielded powerful results across diverse sectors. For example, studies show that the collaboration skills that women often bring to leadership positions have helped to overcome significant performance inhibitors, such as the lack of a willingness to compromise.

Learning to Listen

Successful collaboration and effective relationship-building are often a by-product of another core leadership skill in which female leaders tend to excel: The ability to listen. After all, no matter what the field of endeavor, leadership is about people.

You can be the most brilliant person in government or industry. You can have the loftiest credentials and a litany of achievements a mile long, but if you don’t have people skills, you simply can’t lead.

And you can’t begin to develop people skills if you don’t first learn to listen. Listening enables you to understand your team, needs, expectations, values, and worldviews. Once you have cultivated such an understanding of your people by hearing them out, by soliciting, evaluating, and leveraging their feedback, then you will be in a prime position to collaborate, negotiate, and compromise.

Problem-Solving and Innovation

Another essential leadership skill to which women in positions of authority appear to be especially effective is that of creative problem-solving. Female executives, business owners, and government officials have proven particularly adept in innovating to resolve both long-standing and emergent problems and crises.