Nurturing can be good for businesses

How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success

By Margaret Heffernan

Viking, 274 pages, $25.95

---

The corporate world is still frequently a macho universe that many women find, well, alien.

And getting ahead in that world often means adopting new behaviors and shuffling priorities.

Margaret Heffernan spent years in work atmospheres where toughness was a top-dog requirement, all-nighters were a rite of passage, firing people earned respect and work was measured in quantity, not quality.

But who really wants to work that way? And is it really all that effective? Aren't we supposed to work smarter, not harder?

In researching and writing How She Does It, a new book that explores why businesses owned by women are booming, Heffernan discovered something that made her uncomfortable: Traditionally female characteristics such as empathy and a tendency to nurture -- traits she had ...