So too did the leaders of industry and the usually omnipresent representatives of the constituted bodies.

Pity. They missed a brilliant speech.

Viviane Amar, a Canadian residing in Europe, and representing Leading Leadership Int. Ltd, did not unleash any feminist harangue, as those who stayed away must have feared. Nor did she speak about males vs females.

She spoke mostly about the Pharaoh and Moses as role models, exemplifying the persons of power on the one hand, whether male or female, and the real leaders on the other.

It is obvious that the persons of power are mostly males, although Ms Amar identified some women who fitted this role, such as Margaret Thatcher. And, obviously too, the leadership qualities she praised are to be found in women, although, again, not exclusively so.

Persons of power get people to serve them, whereas the real leaders serve the people.

Persons of power consider themselves gods, just like the Pharaoh did. They claim they are omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Before them, the world did not exist.

In their dealings with subordinates they instil a culture of fear, rather than trust. They own the system, they are the system.

Companies led by persons of power tend to be expansionary. The companies which have come to grief – Parmalat, Vivendi – are all dominated by such persons.

On the other hand the leader is the facilitator. This person knows humility, has doubts. He/she do not have ready-made solutions, they engage in a quest to find solutions.

The pyramid structure behoves well to the Pharaoh: one usually finds the culture of control. No questions are asked, only obedience is required.

On the other hand the leader is a person of networks, existing in a multi-polar world, rather than at the top of a pyramid.

Leaders manage by values and their real worth comes through in a crisis.

Persons of power, on the other hand, impose their values on their subordinates. Persons of power want instant gratification. Women of power lose their feminine side.

The leader person is a person based on the inner self. Persons of power, on the contrary, are persons who fear, who have no self-esteem. This leads them to adopt an aggressive attitude at work since most of the problems at work are usually people-problems. But the persons of power are ill-equipped to deal with this side of human nature: ever since they were small, they had been brought up to hide their emotions. They end up using only a small part of their brain. The rest of their brain, that activated by interaction, is left lying fallow.

It follows that many problems of authority encountered at work derive from unsolved problems in their past. Many, however, do not realise this. This attitude of command and domination could have worked in the past, when persons, such as the slaves of the Pharoahs, were put to work making bricks for the pyramids. But this attitude works less and less today as a persons’s work becomes based more on intelligence. It is for this reason that today’s world needs more leaders and less persons of power.

The leader understands his or her weaknesses but he/she turns them to strengths.

We can consider the Pharaoh as a good administrator who gets things done, but at a terrible cost. The leader, on the other hand, learns to delegate – something that persons of power are unable to do. At most they delegate control, but not responsibility.

Only leaders bring about synergies. People, especially today, are so fragile and so lonely – there is so much loneliness in people today.

A leader can thus empathise with other people: who feel they are lost, who realise they need help but who get help only from people who do not judge them.

Persons of power, on the other hand, do not realise how fragile they are: they think they are gods. Leaders, however, understand they are fragile, which is all the more reason why they use up the time of their lives to giving to other people: time is too precious to throw away such chances.

Persons of power, Ms Amar concluded, are becoming things of the past. Men or women who are leaders, are full of empathy: they and they alone will make it.

Answering questions, Ms Amar added another valid comment: she compared men and women watching the same film. Men would be more interested in certain aspects of the film, while women would be more interested in the more sophisticated aspects: the zone of language and the emotions.

Men started off as hunters, but through cultural socialisation developed other skills.

Men and women are still very different from each other, yet they are all looking for recognition at all levels. People are still afraid of strangers especially those who still do not have an idea of who they really are.

Rather than competing against each other, people today should learn to compete against themselves, to vanquish their innermost fears.

At the end, a (male) participant asked Ms Amar why the business breakfast was so devoid of males. Ms Amar answered the question with another question: Could it be because they were afraid of finding themselves in a roomful of women?