It's time to change the definition of what it means to be a great leader.

In order to succeed in this incredibly uncertain environment, the skills and strategies that

women have always deployed are more valuable than ever for everyone.

Not only will we see more women succeed, because women traditionally do quite well in times

of crisis, but also we're going to start to see more men adopt these traditionally more

female leadership styles and I think everyone will be the better for it.

This is not a question about philanthropy, this is not a question about what's ethical.

This is just, you know, people want to succeed and they should look at all the data and

there are dozens of studies showing that more diverse businesses are simply more profitable.

That's Julia Borsten, CNBC's Senior Media and Tech correspondent.

Julia created CNBC's Disruptor 50 platform and is author of the new book When Women Lead.

I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group and host of Masters

of Scale Rapid Response.

I wanted to talk to Julia because her research shows how approaches taken by women leaders

are ideally suited to today's business climate.

While representation of women at the top of big companies and startups has improved in

many ways in recent years, the gender gap remains stark.

Julia notes that only 8% of Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs and just 2% of venture dollars

go to female founders.

She argues that that reality limits the potential impact that business innovation could be having

at a time when challenges are seemingly everywhere.

And she offers lessons any leader can apply male or female to improve their efforts.

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