Claire Zammit, PhD, is the cocreator of the acclaimed Feminine Power courses, leading a thriving global community of more than 200,000 women from more than 100 countries. In the last three years, more than 10,000 women have graduated from her seven-week online Feminine Power courses, leadership trainings, and coaching certifications. She is also the cofounder of Evolving Wisdom, a company specializing in online transformative education, which was recently recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in America. Claire is a member of Deepak Chopra’s Evolutionary Leaders Forum, as well as Jack Canfield’s Transformational Leadership Council. She is the author of the forthcoming book Feminine Power.

There are important qualities that women bring to organizations and others that are more common to men. Men and women can cultivate all these qualities in themselves, but we need to recognize each other’s natural strengths and weaknesses and make best use of the former.

I think women have an intuitive and natural advantage in bringing cohesion to things—bringing all the different elements together, getting all the people working on a project together and connected, and generating power that is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a kind of magic that happens. I have seen many women who are naturally good at doing this, and I think it’s where the world is headed. In business, science, and technology, there is new emphasis on bringing people together, on building communities as a better way of igniting imagination and creativity.

There is a desire to care for and be of service to people that comes easily and naturally for women in leadership. I think women value relationships more than task and efficiency, that we are more tuned into seeing people’s potential and wanting to nurture and support that potential. I think men are more oriented to getting things done but often without this intuitive insight into people’s potential, their personal needs, and the social factors that create cohesion in an organization. One of women’s weaknesses can be difficulty in balancing all that with the structural things one needs to be successful—the operational functions that are traditionally more masculine endeavors. I think the challenge for women is to integrate these typically masculine and feminine systems of power.

I’ve seen this in my own career. Years ago, I started running a business with another woman. Neither of us was naturally oriented toward accounting and organizational structure, so things were in disarray. You can’t run a successful business or organization without sound processes and structural foundation. It was important to recognize that I couldn’t serve all those functions myself. I needed people, women and men, who had the right sets of skills and passion for areas in which I was weak. I am proud to see where my organization is now because of the leadership that other people on our team have brought.

Given all that, it’s probably no wonder that women make up about 85 percent of the people who come to personal growth workshops like the ones I lead. Over the three years since we founded my current business, we’ve had seven thousand women in my main online community. I see something waking up in women—they want to actualize their greatest gifts. My partner and I are working together to help create a culture for women and by women.

Evolving Wisdom, a company specializing in online transformative education that my husband and I founded, was recently ranked eighty-third on Inc. magazine’s list of 500 fastest-growing companies. In the last three years, our full-time staff has grown from zero to fifty. In those three years, I have found a new way to lead that is unique and true to me. The two of us are trying to find new ways of creating organizations that have heart-centered, spiritual values. The fact that I’m a woman—being naturally good at forging new relationships, taking initiative, and being creative—has been a key factor in our success and in building the culture of our organization.

The focus I’ve always had on cultivating relationships and connections has been a secret to my personal success. I think of success as an authentic expression of who I am and what I care about, so having holistic success in your life grows out of being connected to yourself and others. That has been foundational for me. I made a decision about fifteen years ago to do whatever I needed to make a contribution to the world—to get the best mentoring and to go wherever I needed to go, even when that meant leaving my home in Australia. That’s being true to one’s calling. The other key to success is forging great connections with people who can support you and teach you and help you. There are women who have been truly critical to my career by extending themselves to me at critical times—such as Dr. Jean Houston, Marianne Williamson, Marci Shimoff, and Katherine Woodward Thomas, who are extraordinary women leaders. I am in awe of how generous these women have been. I absolutely owe so much of my success to them.

One of the hardest things for a woman starting out in any field is to believe in herself. I certainly had a lot of insecurity. I wasn’t sure that what I had to contribute to the marketplace was valuable. I was putting myself out there as an expert, despite the fact that I was far from having everything figured out. (I still am.) So having women who can share their own experiences is vital. They can help you see that you don’t need to be perfect to make a contribution or to begin your journey in creating a successful enterprise. Advice, mentoring, support—they’re all vital to women who are stepping into leadership roles.

And that’s advice I’d pass on to any woman getting started. Each of us needs to recognize that we have gifts and talents that the world perhaps has never seen before and may never see again. You should absolutely trust your sense of the contribution you have to give. You should commit completely to finding out what you can create. Once you make that commitment, all manner of unforeseen support will emerge, and you will find your way. Invest in your education and get the best mentoring you possibly can. Find and build support for your enterprise; don’t do it all by yourself. Find other women who are as committed to creating their own futures as you are, and support each other on the journey.