While females represent only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, recent studies suggest that if companies want great leadership, they should hire a woman.

Corinne Post, associate professor of management at Lehigh University’s College of Business and Economics, agrees and she told Fast Company there are certain circumstances that give women an advantage.

“As a woman, it sounds exciting that women are better leaders, but I wanted to explore under what context women have more of an impact,” she told the publication.

Post studied members of 82 teams in 29 innovative organizations to learn how the gender of the leader relates to team cohesion, cooperative learning and participative communication. Her report “When is Female Leadership an Advantage?” was published in the June issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and reveals that as coordination requirements increase, teams with female leaders report greater team cohesion, more cooperative learning and more inclusive communication than those led by men.

When there is a conflict, for example, women exhibit more empathy and are better listeners. They express themselves well, and they understand the knowledge that can be embedded in relationships, Post said. These relationship qualities help create and build strong teams.

In teams that don’t have these same three challenges, however, Post found that there are fewer differences between the genders.