"Our familiar paradigm of leadership is based on a male, military model of success, with winners and losers and, at the top, a hero figure who has reached the fifth and highest level of Maslow's hierarchy--self-actualization. But researchers who have explored outside this model of individual command and control have discovered a more effective style of leadership, one based on the capacity to use both analysis and empathy, and drawing on strengths traditionally associated with the interconnected, feeling world of women. This vision of leadership is not an either-or choice between 'male' versus 'female' styles, but an invitation to incorporate the many neglected aspects of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral empathy that transform transactional hierarchies into generative communities. In calling for a 'Sixth Level' beyond self-actualization--'self-in-relation'--this book points to the need for all of us, no matter what position we hold, to move into an awareness of interconnectedness so that individuals, businesses, communities, and even the planet can thrive." - BETTY S. FLOWERS, PHD, former director of the LBJ Presidential Library and coauthor of Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future