We’ve all heard the claims, the theories, and the speculation about the ways leadership styles vary between women and men. Our latest survey data puts some hard numbers into the mix. Our data come from 360° evaluations; so what they are tracking is the judgment of a leader’s peers, bosses and direct reports. We asked these individuals to rate each leader’s effectiveness overall and also to judge how strong he or she is on 16 competencies that our 30 years of research shows are most important to overall leadership effectiveness. We asked, for instance, how good a leader is at taking initiative, developing others, inspiring and motivating, and pursuing their own development.
Our latest survey of 7280 leaders that we evaluated in 2011 confirms some seemingly eternal truths about men and women leaders in the workplace, but also holds some surprises. Our dataset was generated from leaders in some of the most successful and progressive organizations in the world both public and private, government and commercial, domestic and international.
Most stereotypes would have us believe that female leaders excel at “nurturing” competencies such as developing others and building relationships and many might put exhibiting integrity and engaging in self-development in that category as well. And in all four cases our data concurred; women did score higher than men. But the women’s advantages were not at all confined to traditionally women’s strengths. In fact at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts.
At all levels, women were rated higher in 12 of the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership. Two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree, taking initiative and driving for results, have long been thought of as particularly male strengths. Men outscored women significantly on only one management competence in this survey, the ability to develop a strategic perspective.
So what should we conclude from this data? Why are we not engaging and fully employing these exemplary women leaders? Blatant discrimination is a potential explanation; if not actual then certainly perceptual.
When we shared our findings with a group of women outside this particular survey and asked them to suggest why they thought their colleagues had been rated so highly on taking initiative and self-development, their answers pointed to the still tenuous position they feel themselves to be in the workplac
- “We need to work harder than men to prove ourselves.”
- “We feel the constant pressure to never make a mistake, and to continually prove our value to the organization.”
What should leaders and managers do with these findings? Here are our thoughts:
- Organizations need to achieve exceptional results and they ought to be aware that many women have impressive leadership skills. Our research shows these leadership skills are strongly correlated to organizational success factors such as retaining talent, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and profitability.
- As to the constant state of unease we hear women leaders express; clearly, chauvinism or discrimination is an enigma that organizations (and the business culture) should work hard to prevent. However, that said; think of the benefits every leader in every organization would gain from a mind-set that they simply can’t afford to make a mistake.
Extract from the Harvard Business Review on LinkedIn (15 March 2012) by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman