At Park Road Books Thursday: 'How Women Lead Better Together'

Maggie Ellis Chotas

As a journalist, I've not experienced a business partnership with other women, though I have worked with and for many women over the years.

I am, however, a member of a small group of women who have met together on Wednesday mornings for almost 30 years. I am constantly amazed at how adept women are at paying attention to each others' problems. They are empathetic and patient listeners, they respond to each other thoroughly and completely, and they don't stop until they have worked together to find creative solutions to life's many vexations and perplexities.

That group is one reason I was interested in Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas's new book, "Power Through Partnership: How Women Lead Better Together" (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., $16.95).

Polk of Chapel Hill is facilitator, mediator and board-certified coach, and Chotas, who grew up in Charlotte and lives in Durham, is a also facilitator and leadership coach. Together, they founded Mulberry Partners, a business that advises business partners.
 
In her foreword, Anne-Marie Slaughter ("Why Women Still Can't Have It All") says that Polk and Chotas "offer real, practical solutions to the dilemmas that face even the most ambitious and committed women among us."


During their 12-year partnership, Polk and Chotas interviewed 125 female co-leaders who had plenty to say about the power of their partnerships. These women became their mentors as they wrote this "guidebook we never had" for women who are "ready for a better way to lead, to work, to live."

The authors will talk about their experiences and the power of female partnerships at 7 p.m., on Thursday, Jan. 15, at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road, Charlotte, N.C., 28210.