Command-and-control, the top-down management approach characterized by an authoritarian, lean-and-mean culture epitomized by famed former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, may have delivered results and boosted profits. But it failed to capitalize on women’s talents. Corseted by corporate cultures formed in the male military model, 1990s women reported that they developed styles to make men comfortable in order to succeed; two decades later, women have yet to reach 15 percent of executive officers. Even in 2005, Catalyst documented the stereotype among top executives that “women take care, men take charge.” This shows that many still believe men’s skills—like influencing and delegating—make them more suited to the corner office.

But the culture is finally changing. Now women are taking charge by taking care. “We still need to deliver results, but how you motivate and engage employees has changed,” says Monica Luechtefeld, EVP, E-commerce and Direct Marketing at Office Depot. “People want to be engaged, so now leading is about communicating a vision and enrolling them in it, then motivating them to deliver those results. Having more women in the workplace has spurred this transition.”

NAFE'S Betty Spence on Top Companies radio interview

At this year’s NAFE Top 50, we find organizations that recognize the profits to be reaped by capitalizing on what women bring to the table: strong leadership through building teams, finding consensus and considering the big picture. “The ‘soft’ skills were once considered women’s tools—those warm-and-fuzzy people skills that were nice to have but unnecessary in the hard-charging, results-driven business world,” says Peggy Klaus, author of The Hard Truth About Soft Skills. “Not so anymore. Soft skills are as important, if not more so, as the hard ones, and they will make or break you as a leader.”

The winning companies are advancing women whose personal brands combine acute business acumen with  collaboration, listening and people development. Not coincidentally, we find growing numbers of women in top positions at these companies: Women hold 23 percent of board seats (versus 16 percent at the Fortune 500) and represent 14 percent of CEOs (versus 2 percent). This year, we report a milestone: At our winning companies, women are running 23 percent of the operations that bring in more than $1 billion in revenue. Women from these companies sat down with NAFE to define their leadership brands and describe the programs that are helping them succeed. Here’s a snapshot of eight key elements of their success.

They’re taking big assignments
Last year, Marriott International moved women into five of its 12 newly created area VP positions, increasing its female P&L firepower. Rita Cuddihy, 54, former CEO of US Airways Shuttle, took on the job of area VP, Western Region, overseeing Marriott, Renaissance and JW Marriott brands. She is responsible for a half billion dollars in revenue. Previously SVP and COO for Marriott’s Central Region, and prior to that SVP, Renaissance Hotels and Resorts, Cuddihy says, “What I enjoy most is the P&L responsibility. By having this broader perspective, I can create strategies for making each individual hotel—and its owner—successful.”

Working with general managers on Marriott’s “balanced scorecard” tool, she stays on top of each hotel’s success based on financials and customer satisfaction. She also meets with up-and-comers and helps them become managers and leaders. Offering “evenings of engagement” at hotels in various cities, Cuddihy joins high-potentials to discuss challenges and what will help them succeed. “This goes beyond mentoring,” she says. “They talk about strategic business issues. They meet senior leaders and network with peers.” Cuddihy follows up with individuals over coffee. “We’ve seen great people get to the radar screen and get promoted. This is an inspirational part of my job.”

At Walmart, the President’s Global Council of Women Leaders serves as a vehicle of visibility that has led to significant promotions. Sharon Orlopp, SVP and new global chief diversity officer, serves with 13 other women—half from outside the United States—on this council formed in 2009. “We focus on developing female leaders and increasing women in the pipeline through mentorship, sponsorship, visibility and championing opportunities,” says Orlopp. The council has encouraged the company to invest in women internationally. “We’re offering financial assistance to fuel small business growth,” she says, “and we have opened retail training centers for women in India and Brazil. Once trained, the women may work for Walmart or other companies.” Council members will rotate off every 18 months, and Orlopp reports that already “three of the council’s women received promotions to EVP, and half have made significant moves.”

At public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, women run half of the U.S. offices and serve as four of seven regional presidents. One of the latter is Lynne Anne Davis, who joined the firm in 1990 as an assistant account executive and jokes, “I’ve held every title they introduced. I’d climb the ladder and they’d make it longer.” Now on one of the top rungs as a senior partner and president, Asia Pacific, Davis says, “I thought I was taking a one-year assignment when I was sent to run the Hong Kong office fourteen years ago. I had much to learn, but I knew how to reach out to my mentors and had no compunction admitting I didn’t have a solution for something.”

She assumed regional responsibility in 2001 and now oversees 16 offices in nine countries. In the past three years, she doubled the size of the office and doubled her family by adding two sons. “I couldn’t have had my second child without the support of my management team. Women encouraging one another is an important part of the success equation,” she says.

Davis describes her leadership style by referencing management guru Tom Peters: “Kindness is a growth driver. I decided a long time ago that the culture of Fleishman is my responsibility. Having empathy helps create an environment of high morale. Having a place where people support each other encourages risk-taking. Give amazing employees a rewarding experience and profitability increases.” The Asian operation grew 30 percent last year.

They’re finding sponsors
One reason women haven’t moved up as quickly as men, according to a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, is that women’s mentors don’t talk them up the way men’s mentors do. “Women need sponsors to advocate for them when they’re not in the room. Sponsorship is often the differentiating factor in a woman’s advancement—or retention,” comments American Express Chief Diversity Officer Kerrie Peraino. A program called Pathways to Sponsorship encourages women to add sponsors to their roster of helpful people and has started forging pairs that could grow into sponsorship. “Sponsorship is earned,” adds Peraino. “You can’t ring me up and ask me to be your sponsor. I do that when I see your work and I advocate for it.”

DuPont has one of the best sponsorship deals going. Two years ago, Diane Gulyas, president, Performance Polymers, attended the NAFE Roundtable and described a P&L initiative where she—along with five male peers running major platforms—committed to advancing six women within two years, for a total of 36 promotions. One of the women she sponsored, Alexa Dembek, was recently promoted to Americas regional director, Performance Polymers.

Dembek holds a PhD in chemistry and joined DuPont as a polymer scientist in 1991. Her success dispels the myth about the incompatibility of P&L jobs and motherhood: She’s currently raising three boys, ages 9, 12 and 15, while running a business with about $1 billion in sales. “I’ve worked for Diane on and off for fifteen years,” says Dr. Dembek. “She sees the big picture, the need to touch every function, meet different kinds of challenges. She’s always advocated for giving different functional and business experiences to women so they can move into leadership.” More than ten years ago, Gulyas moved her “from running a manufacturing plant into sales for the largest customer in the business, an exhilarating shift that forced me to learn quickly.”

They’re filling in skill gaps
“Women don’t use relationships as well as men do, either for a business need or to progress in their own careers,” says Amy Wright, VP HR, Worldwide Sales, Software Group, IBM. So the company launched the “Building Relationships and Influencing” initiative (BRI), which Wright, its global executive sponsor, describes as targeting “nuggets that hold women back, like negotiating relationships to get to the right place, land the business and get business results.”

“I didn’t know I should be doing this. I believed my performance would speak for itself and get recognized by my seniors,” says Likia Hawkins, project manager in IBM’s Global Business Services—Public Sector. She was chosen last year to join a BRI course with 20 other high-potential women who are two to four years away from promotion. Over several days, they focused on how to build and sustain business relationships and increase their influencing skills. Hawkins raves about “the secure learning environment and wealth of information” she gleaned during the video diagnostic session, career exercises and behavior clinic. “We learned to recognize and respond to verbal and nonverbal cues from our listeners, and this helped me become clear, concise, to the point.” She reports increased credibility with customers and colleagues and greater confidence since the program. “Before, I was okay just being the deputy program manager on projects,” she says. Today she leads her own project.

Kraft Foods offers “Efficacy for Women” that fills in skills women might lack, like effective risk-taking, influencing and building networks to achieve business outcomes. Participant Andrea Jackson, HR director, HQ Sales, says that the course helped her understand her own value and then to take control. “What struck me most,” says Jackson, the mother of two grown sons, “was learning to live your life by design, not by default. I’ve had a great career here, but you can’t wait around for someone to realize what you bring to the table.” A member of the Asian-American employee council, Jackson says, “Self-talk can take you down the wrong path, particularly as a woman or person of color. We can be more critical of ourselves than we need to be.” Now less risk-averse and with a stronger network, she received a recent promotion.

Another skill gap for women is rainmaking, creating a significant amount of new business. So consulting firm Accenture created “Developing Client-centric Women” to help senior managers qualify for senior executive positions. Pamela Craig, CFO and 20-year partner, has facilitated such sessions in the United States and abroad. “Participants have built their careers to this point, but now comes a big jump,” she says. “We talk through challenges, build their network and get them to realize that although client service is demanding, our culture is team-oriented. We’re all covering for each other.” Adds this mother of two grown boys, “I relate to their challenges because I’ve been through it. Sometimes it’s just a matter of building confidence.” Craig’s mentee Nellie Borrero, global human capital and diversity lead, says participants already have run client engagements and built teams but now need to focus on building new business and expanding current business. The three-day course adds gender intelligence training to help them advance and deal effectively with clients of the other gender.

They’re getting on succession plans
Countless women haven’t advanced because they weren’t on the radar of higher-ups or didn’t know about opportunities. WellPoint supports transparency in succession planning to eliminate all mystery, a strategy that leads to greater gender fairness. About 2,200 individuals—60 percent women—between five and seven levels down from CEO participate. “Nothing is secret,” explains executive talent director Judy Wade. “Participants refresh their information, indicate what positions they’re interested in, comment on their strengths, their needs, their relocation availability.” The company posts jobs up to VP level, and people can indicate interest. They can recommend their own replacement, and their manager can nominate them for a position anywhere in the company. Though not unique in using such a database, WellPoint has the largest, according to Wade, who says, “Other companies have about fifty participants, so they don’t find people for all types of opportunities at all levels.” This terrific tool means women benefit from opportunities that might have gone unnoticed because of WellPoint’s size.

Wade calls CEO Angela Braly “the poster child for our succession planning.” After WellPoint merged with Anthem, she explains, the head attorney decided to retire and went into the database to seek a successor. He found Braly, at the time in a P&L role as president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Missouri, a WellPoint subsidiary. He saw that she had served as division general counsel of RightCHOICE Managed Care, parent of BCBS Missouri. He hired her as WellPoint’s general counsel, and that’s how the future CEO came to headquarters.

Having a huge database offers one solution; accounting firm KPMG implemented an equally effective succession process in order to increase women partners. “We created a Diversity and Inclusion Scorecard that’s now a robust identification process,” says Kathy Hannan, national managing partner of Corporate Responsibility and Diversity. The scorecard tracks D&I indicators like recruitment, retention and promotions and gets examined by the management and, most importantly, by the board. Hannan explains that for several years now, they’ve had business leaders identify everyone in the pipeline for partnership in the following three years. “The data catches women stalled in the channels, so we know all the women qualified for partnership and can work on missing competencies,” says Hannan. “It’s no accident that we’re leading in the profession in women partners, at nineteen percent. You set stretch goals. You shine the spotlight on it. You communicate. You have commitment at the top.”

They’re building networks
Abbott’s Women Leaders in Action (WLA) earned the 2009 ACE (Advancement, Commitment, Engagement) Award from the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, and NAFE considers it one of the nation’s leading women’s networks. WLA began in 2001 after CEO Miles D. White consulted with a recently hired woman executive and both saw the importance of developing women leaders and creating a dedicated program for their development. Ten senior women laid out the plan, and with CEO endorsement, the new network received a budget and launched at eight Abbott sites. Now corporate-wide, ten chapters operate.

“We’re a well-oiled machine,” says Patty Knoblauch, director of quality systems and process improvement, Global Pharma R&D Quality. Chair of the WLA governance council, she attributes the network’s staying power to support from the top, efforts at the grassroots level and a strong structure. She describes an executive committee of 24 executive sponsors across all functions, each sponsoring a chapter or committee. “It’s all volunteer,” she says. “We make a two-year commitment as leaders and continually update the long-range and marketing plans, using benchmarking, surveys and focus groups.” Abbott’s Executive Inclusion Council, which monitors hiring and advancement of women and minorities, provides guidance.

The network benefits women of all levels and interests, says Knoblauch, because “it’s a safe place to step up. Participating on a team or leading one of WLA’s nine committees, women can take on roles they wouldn’t have in their own jobs, with a five-thousand-person network as backup. You can pick up the phone and call people you meet through the WLA and they’ll be there for you or point you to who can help.” Knoblauch finds the network benefits her daily. “Like other members, I now have connections with people across the organization, including some at the highest levels. We’re now a solid part of the culture.”

They’re finding mentors at all levels
When NAFE spoke with Procter & Gamble’s Melanie Healey in 2006, she was serving as president of Global Feminine Care. Since that time, she has been named group president, North America, responsible for 40 percent of the company’s total sales. “I’ve been adding categories, bigger businesses, a greater scope of responsibility,” says Healey, “but it’s still about running a business, delivering the numbers, working the financials, putting money where it will return the best results.” Senior executives need mentors as much as anyone, and as Healey transitioned to the new job, she asked to talk to a woman at the CEO level “who could help with tips about what it takes to manage a complex business and also about work life balance.”

P&G paired her with one of its four female board members, Pat Woertz, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland. “We meet every six months or so for a dinner in a relaxed, informal environment. I come with questions, and she comes ready to offer great advice,” says Healey. “And she’s given me her perspective on    board do’s and don’ts.” P&G encourages its senior executives to join corporate boards, and Healey—a Latina born in Brazil—serves on the board of Bacardi. “It’s a good fit because it’s a Latin company and a company of brands, a repeatable skill at P&G: branding, customer understanding, advertising and promotion.” She serves on the board’s compensation committee.

AOL provides mentors for women executives moving into new roles to get them generating business results within three months, based on The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins. One beneficiary is Erynn Peterson, VP, Developer Evangelism, who joined AOL last November after working at Amazon and Microsoft and starting and selling her own business, an auction automation technology firm. So what’s a developer evangelist? “We work with third parties, sometimes small start-ups in garages, sometimes bigger, to ensure they understand the technology needs of the marketplace, and we make sure customers understand the new technology before it comes to market.”

Peterson has flourished with her assigned mentor and says, “Starting out at a company, you have a lot of blind spots. Having someone to bounce stuff off in a structured framework has helped me land well.” Her woman mentor helped her recognize that “any woman in an executive role is still an aberration. I need to be cognizant of my role as a woman in a technology company: Am I doing my best to make sure others can work to their capacity? Am I being the best executive I can be to both the men and the women?” Peterson says her management style changed after she became a mom—she has two children, and her boyfriend also has two. “If I were a car, I’d be an aggressive sports car that accommodates more than two passengers. But I have to pace my team to help them grow forward. I’m more effective as I’ve become more empathetic.”

They’re combining hard and soft skills
With a program called “Women in the Pipeline and at the Top,” American Express is training employees about gender and skills in order to stanch its losses of women at critical career stages. With women as 60 percent of its 60,000 employees, “we’re not happy with a C-suite of fifteen percent women,” says CDO Peraino. “We’re working to embrace one of the richest pipelines of female talent anywhere and make it work all the way to the top.” Peraino called in gender consultant Barbara Annis to assess the challenges women face, and then did four deep dives with the leadership team to explore gender differences and fill in the gaps for women, like negotiating and resolving conflicts.

Working with both men and women, Annis finds that “when people realize the difference that difference makes, the shift occurs. We help them see that women bring real strengths in how they lead and manage. Then a company doesn’t see adding women as a numbers thing, but as a competitive advantage.” Annis chairs the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard’s Kennedy School and co-authored Leadership and the Sexes. “Soft skills are hard skills now,” she says. “When you look at the state of the world, we need more of them in a big way: collaboration, win-win, contextual thinking, exploring all solutions.”

General Mills’ Tiffanie Boyd can report from the front about how management priorities have changed. She was sent as VP HR to General Mills Canada and tasked to implement the Great Managers initiative. “Managing Millennials is different from managing Boomers,” she says. “We expect managers today to understand what matters to employees. That means manager training has to focus both on business and on the softer skills.” Boyd ruminates on why this has occurred: “How people communicate has changed. Millennials are all networked, nothing is secret, information is out and available, work/home relations are transparent. Their parents call us! We’re maintaining a progressive position to make sure managers build the softer side of their role to drive greater business results for us.”

Recently promoted to VP HR, Bakeries & Foodservice, Boyd calls her Canada job “a great stretch opportunity. I was both architect and participant in the program, and it made me a more effective leader. I can be tough on my team, and I learned to be more thoughtful.” She now tailors her management approach to an employee’s individual needs. “Being a good manager is not good enough. You get so much more from employees when you’re a great manager, so it’s worth the extra effort to build your skills.” What does great look like? “When managers invest in their people, give them tools to succeed, recognize a job well done, embrace the link between successful employees and strong families, and put them in jobs they didn’t think they could do: This is what great looks like,” says Boyd.

They’re creating a new leadership model
The 15 thriving women highlighted above range from senior executives to young managers, work in both P&L and support functions and come from all industries—technology, consumer products, financial services, consulting, manufacturing, lodging—offering a cross-section of American business. Their notably parallel personal brands reveal a combination of hard and soft skills, and their success points to corporate cultures that invite them to lead from their strengths as women. Granted, they’re part of the rarified universe of the NAFE Top 50, but companies on our list often are bellwethers, and NAFE predicts that within five years, women will have reached the tipping point where their leadership numbers will grow exponentially.

But the changing appreciation of what makes a great leader today is not just about women. Peggy Klaus finds that “men practice some of the supposedly soft skills better than women—like political savvy, negotiating and leveraging their networks. Soft skills are the hardest skills we ever have to learn.” Walmart’s Orlopp sees how men are changing: “I noticed this when Tony Dungy was coaching the Colts at the Super Bowl [2007]. He and the opposing coach weren’t yellers. Just like in the business world, people with collaboration skills are rising more than those with command-and-control styles. People who don’t solicit input and don’t listen will struggle in their careers.” One male CEO in a Wellesley study of gender on corporate boards says having both men and women at the table leads to more responsible decision-making. Who wouldn’t want that?