THE GUARDIAN, Tuesday, July 30, 2013
PEOPLES DIGEST
29
Women’s leadership style By Allison Shirreffs
Do women have a unique style? As co-authors Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson collected research for their latest book, The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, they noticed a trend: Women were leaving jobs that, at least from the authors’ perspective, looked desirable. They wondered why. “The women were all saying the same thing,” Helgesen recalls, “It’s not worth it.” HAT did that mean, “It’s not worth it?” W And why were talented, highly skilled women dropping out of the work force at a faster rate than men? To find answers to these questions, Helgesen and Johnson set out to quantify how men and women perceive, define, and pursue satisfaction at work. While they found many similarities between men and women, they also discovered, Helgesen notes, “a certain disconnect between what organizations expected and what women, at their best, had to offer.” For instance, Wall Street culture may not deliberately discriminate against women, but it may reject leaders whose values aren’t focused on money and power. “If you want that, you sacrifice everything else,” Helgesen says. “Is it a surprise that you end up with a culture that promotes the greediest people?” Conflict between feminine and masculine qualities in business Lately, much has been written about the benefits of leadership traits that are typically regarded as feminine (such as a collaborative, democratic approach that rewards rather than reprimands) and whether or not organizations whose leaders possess these feminine qualities are better off. According to Alice H. Eagly, professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, the answer is, “It depends”, and added, “I don’t want to say it’s not true. It’s slightly true.” In her book Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders, Eagly and co-author Linda L. Carli, associate professor, Wellesley College, explore why the number of women in power remains rare and why their presence in leadership positions still evokes a sense of wonder. “It’s not a good argument [to say] that women have a better leadership style than men,” Eagly states, adding that it’s also not factual to say women make worse leaders than men. It is, however, accurate to say that women have a more difficult time towing the line between being assertive and being demure. According to “Diversity and Leadership in a Changing World,” an article co-authored by Eagly and Jean Lau Chin, dean, Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University, female leaders are expected to take charge – just like their male counterparts. But they’re also expected to “deliver the warmth and friendliness that is culturally prescribed for women,” the authors write. “Simultaneously impressing others as a good leader and a good woman is an accomplishment that is not necessarily easy to achieve, and common pitfalls involve seeming to be ‘too masculine’ or ‘too feminine.’” Women are usually transformational leaders Twenty years ago, Helgesen published, The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership. She wrote the book in part because she felt women were getting bad advice. They were being told, essentially, to leave their values at home and conform to the workplace. Women were finally making it into the executive suite, but once there, others had expectations about how they should behave. But meta-analyses of men and women’s leadership styles don’t show a dramatic difference between genders. What the data illustrate is that transformational leaders – leaders who stand for what’s good about the organization and behave as such; who are good teachers
and coaches, care about their employees as individuals and can inspire and motivate them to do their best, are optimal to lead today’s modern organizations, Eagly says. “To a small extent, women manifest these qualities more than male managers,” she adds. Promotion for women leaders is scarce If that’s the case, why aren’t women being promoted as often as their male counterparts? “Women have something to overcome,” Eagly says. She blames this on the often small, but insidious, prejudices and stereotypes that women and other minorities must cope with. This is especially true in the corporate world. In its recent 2010 poll, only 28 of FORTUNE 1000 companies had women as their CEOs. “There are a lot of women doing a lot of leadership but in the corporate culture? Not so much,” Eagly notes. “It doesn’t make sense except by tradition – people tend to reproduce themselves.” Since men – specifically white men – hold the majority of executive positions in corporations, this tends to work against women and other minorities. Top notch leadership resists change Some corporations are organized more around networks, but many remain tied to a culture of position and power, and are run from the top down. “I don’t see large and powerful organizations making significant changes if the people at the top are blocking change or inhibiting change,” Helgesen says. “We need to expand how we define leadership – how leaders develop and how organizations do or do not take advantage of that.” An idea that’s gaining ground and “that’s good for women,” Eagly notes, is that leadership is ultimately androgynous. There is also a push to have modern leadership theories in corporate diversity considerations – not just of gender, but of race, sexual orientation, culture, and the like. “If [leaders] are from different social groups, backgrounds, and have the right training, they tend to be able to come up with more creative solutions,” Eagly explains. And if there is more diversity in a company’s leadership ranks, there will be a better understanding of its customer/client base as well. “There are a lot of arguments for diversity – not just in leadership style,” Eagly adds. Support should be strategic Most companies have learned to make the business case for women in leadership roles, but they don’t always back up their rhetoric with structure and strategy, Heglesen says. She’s also disappointed in how few forums – internally and externally – women have to connect and share in productive ways. “Women have a capacity for noticing the details of human relationships,” Helgesen says. “There need to be ways of bringing that info into the strategic planning sessions.” Any employee who wants to be a leader and effect change is best served, Helgesen says, by honing those skills most valued by today’s companies – such as line management and international experience. In addition to a good skill set, potential leaders must also be able to articulate their value, make themselves visible, build “social capital” within the organization, and create a network of peers who will provide support throughout their careers. “Women have to understand what the criteria are for rising [in organizations],” Eagly says, “and figure out how to help one another to meet those criteria.” Allison Shirreffs is a writer and photographer who has worked with The Coca-Cola Corporation and Fortune Magazine, among others. Find out more about her at http://www.womenetics.com/How-ToLead/womens-ways-of-leadership
Women Leaders thinning out in corporate world
HUMAN RESOURCES
Source: mqup.ca