Who Make Better Leaders Women or Men?
■ Mark Wager is an international leadership expert who regularly runs programmes in Fiji. He will be visiting Fiji in March. If you are interested in Mark training your Managers contact him at Mark@leadership.com.fj
During the past week the Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand resigned and this has promoted a lot of debate about the qualities of female Leaders as opposed to male Leasers as well as the level of misogyny that female Leaders are subjected to in the workplace, this promoted a participant at a Leadership workshop I was delivering a few days ago to ask me the following question “who make better Leaders - Men or Women?”
Before we get to the answer and my opinion on the topic let’s look at some research on the issue. In 2012 and 2019 Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman conducted research that was published in the Harvard Business review.
In the study they analysed over seven thousand 360-degree reviews. If you are not aware of 360-reviews these are performance reviews in which the Leaders Manager, the leaders peers and members of their teams comment on and rate their effectiveness.
The results in 2012 and 2019 were similar and while the differences between male and female Leaders wasn’t huge they found that women scored higher than men in seventeen out of the nineteen Leadership qualities measured.
The biggest differential came in the following six Leadership qualities in which women scored much higher than men.
■Taki■g initiative
■Resi●ie■ce
■Practisi■g self-development
■Drive for results
■Disp●ayi■g high integrity and honesty
■The ability to develop others
Upon initial reading it easy to come to the decision that women make better Leaders than Men but that’s not the conclusion of the study.
The study shows that the women currently in Leadership roles are displaying better leadership qualities than their male counterparts especially when it comes to the qualities listed above, this doesn’t mean women make better leaders just that the wom-an currently is Leadership roles are overall better what you need to take into account is the barriers both genders face in order to obtain those positions of authority.
I’ve trained many Leaders over the years and when I look back I notice a clear difference between genders especially when it comes to emotional intelligence just as way of example typically a male Leader will tell me they have a poor performing team and ask me who to fix them while a female Leader will tell me that they are struggling to motivate a poor performing team and ask me how to fix them and not the team.
Does this mean women make better leaders but what it does show me is that the skill level you have to reach in order to obtain a Leadership role is not the same for both genders.
If you look at world Leaders, as at January this year only 10 out of 152 elected head of states were women. In business only 4.9% of Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO. The undeniable truth is that it’s far more difficult for a women to obtain a Leadership role than it is for a male especially when talking about a senior role.
When a Leadership role is available in the business world it is more likely to be given to a male candidate. The same can be said for positions in public office when a woman is often criticised for public displays of ambition.
You can just look at the last presidential campaign in the United States showing how male and female candidates received very different coverage in the media. It appears that different rules are applied depending on your gender. By way of example when a man gets angry it’s generally perceived as a sign of passion yet when a women gets angry it’s perceived as being hysterical.
I’m addition if you look at the level of misogynistic and hateful comments that female Leaders attract it’s not surprising that there ,any women who do not seek out any riel that increases their profile. This type of bias in society means women are less likely to apply to Senior Leadership roles and when they do they are less likely to be appointed. This means when you find a Female Leader they are often in that position because they are significantly better than their male counterparts.
‘Any society that fails to harness the energy & creativity of its women is at a huge disadvantage in the modern world.” — Tian Wei
Now back to the original question, in my opinion gender is irrelevant to Leadership it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman you can develop the skills necessary in order to lead a high performing team.
However what this question did highlight to me what just how underrepresented women are in Leadership roles.
In the business world we have to be conscious about the cultures we create in the workplace and we don’t allow misogynistic behaviour to thrive unanswered, we don’t allow subconscious bias to interfere in deciding making and instead we establish an environment that Leaders are recruited based on ability and not gender.
‘In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” - Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.