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The theories of leadership seldom explain the difference of male leaders and female leaders. Instead of the assumption that the leaders leading traits and leading styles of two sexes are the same, most studies work from the man point of view. Traditionally, the principles and theories of leadership in most cases come from the researches written by male leaders. Many female leaders leadership styles are ignored or forgotten. (Sally Helgsen, 1995) General thoughts indicated that there are some differences between male and female, but these differences are seldom used to explain leadership. The master stream of leadership theories still infers female s leadership by male traits. This research considers that once woman accept the inequality is unfair, then they can create the possibility in working field. As the saying of Peter Senge goes Remove the unwanted doesn t mean you can get what you want. This research wants to draw a picture of real female leaders by finding What You Want, focusing on female leaders successful leadership traits and leadership styles, then to discuss how they overcome the Unwanted. This research adopted case study and in-depth interview methods. After interviewing six female leaders, this research has conclusions listed below: 1. Female leader s traits: Female leaders not only lead people to achieve the goal of organizations, but V
also want to make them improve themselves. The female leaders emphasize ex-birth learning even more than pro-birth gift. It is an everlasting improving process. The female leaders who have strong motivation know they should try hard to hold on every chance, but the others must wait the inspiration by environment or other people. 2. Female leaders leadership style: Female leaders adapt Y theory to make the attributed assumption of employees, but they would transfer to X theory because of changes of environment and so on. They mainly use democratic leadership style and supply with authoritative and laissez faire styles. They try to achieve the balance of employee-oriented and work-oriented. This research discovered that female leaders usually adapt the neutral characteristics or integrate the characteristics of two sexes in leading process. 3. Female leaders and sex issue: This research shows the notion of female leaders that leaders contain those of two sexes, but they should not be separated into two nouns: male leaders and female leaders. This research discovered that all female leaders never benefit from being a female. The dilemmas they face are: challenging the stereotype and the conflict of family and job roles. The ways they treat to male and female employees have no significant differences, and they respect their differences. When it comes to promotion, they never think about the issue of sex. 4. The working philosophy of female leaders: The most important three factors of their job philosophies are interests, mission and self-actualization. Surprisingly, the working hours of female leaders in case study are all very long. Five out of six leaders work for twelve to fifteen hours or even more a day. VI
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