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While corporate trailer blazer turned business owner Patty Azzarello and I were chatting after our recent Social Capitalist Skills Session, I asked her the question that I had run out of time for during the interview: Did her collaborative, relationship-centric leadership style – the secrets of which she shares in her book Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life – strike her as a more female than male model for getting things done? While she acknowledged that women are hard-wired to communicate problems and find solutions in their social networks, she also laughed at the question: “The fact is that most of the tactics I share in Rise I learned from men.”

Whatever its origins, Patty’s social and collaborative approach happens to be widely heralded as the one best suited to the digital economy’s rapidly changing workplace – and workforce. As previous Social Capitalist guests John Hagel and John Seely Brown have written about in The Power of Pull, a strong internal network is key to leveraging informal learning. Nothing is more important to individual and corporate success in today’s constantly changing economy – so listen up!

You’ll hear more about Patty in the interview – and meanwhile here’s a few takeaways from the lessons she passed on, gleaned from a career that took her from Hewlett-Packard’s youngest GM to the head of a $1 billion software business to CEO at 38:

• Why “follow your passion” can be career – and soul – destroying advice, and what to do instead;
• The two-step personal branding secret that quickly established her husband as a superstar at his new company;
• How the world’s most respected executives make it seem like they know all the answers, even when they don’t.

Call run time is just over 30 minutes. Download it to iTunes and take it on your next commute! Click here to get the transcript: Social Capitalist – Patty Azzarello.

Sara Grace is myGreenlight’s Program Director.