Source: Leadership
Column - Leadership is about capacity - the capacity of leaders to listen and observe, to use their expertise as a starting point to encourage dialogue between all levels of decision-making, to establish processes and transparency in decision-making, to articulate their own values and visions clearly but not impose them. Leadership is about setting and not just reacting to agendas, identifying problems, and initiating change that makes for substantial improvement rather than managing change.
This column today is dedicated to all ladies in celebration of Mother's Day. I have read everything I could lay my hands on women as better leaders. I understand the controversies that the studies on women leadership may have generated and will continue to generate.
It is time for our society to face reality and start to deliberately develop our women to assume greater leadership roles. Women should play key roles in leadership rather than be confined to the kitchen and treated as baby factories.
In a recent study, it is very interesting that women score higher in 15 of the 16 competencies studied comparing women to men leaders.
Why are we not engaging and fully employing these exemplary women leaders? Especially if these leadership skills are strongly correlated to organisational success factors such as retaining talent, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and profitability.
This is food for thought for our society at this time where we have seen multiple failures of male-dominated leadership at almost every level from small community level to national and international levels. Our society has very good leaders irrespective of gender but our selection process makes it harder for women to rise because of male chauvinism and, in some cases, mental superiority complex.
We have all heard the claims, the theories, and the speculation about the ways leadership styles vary between women and men. Latest survey data put some hard numbers into the mix.
Data coming from 360 evaluations tracked the judgment of a leader's peers, bosses, and direct reports. These individuals were asked to rate each leader's effectiveness overall and also to judge how strong he or she is on the 16 competencies that 30 years of research shows are most important to overall leadership effectiveness. For instance, how good a leader is at taking the initiative, developing others, inspiring and motivating, and pursuing their own development.
The latest survey of 7,280 leaders evaluated in 2011, confirms some seemingly eternal truths about men and women leaders in the workplace but also holds some surprises. Dataset was generated from leaders in some of the most successful and progressive organisations in the world both public and private, government and commercial, domestic and international.
In the confirmation category is first finding: The majority of leaders (64%) are still men. And the higher the level, the more men there are: In this group, 78% of top managers were men, 67% at the next level down (that is, senior executives reporting directly to the top managers), 60% at the manager level below that.
Similarly, most stereotypes would have society 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 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 - and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows.
Specifically, at all levels, women are rated higher in fully 12 of the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership. And 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. As it happened, 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 these data? Why are we not engaging and fully employing these exemplary women leaders? Yes, blatant discrimination is a potential explanation. If not actual then certainly perceptual. When women were asked 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 workplace:
"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 organisation."
That is, anecdotally, at least, the women queried don't feel their appointments are safe. They're afraid to rest on their laurels.
Feeling the need (often keenly) to take initiative, they are more highly motivated to take feedback to heart.
The irony is that these are fundamental behaviours that drive the success of every leader, whether woman or man.
Why are women viewed as less strategic? This is an easier question to answer. Top leaders always score significantly higher in this competency; since more top leaders are men, men still score higher here in the aggregate. But when measuring only men and women in top management on strategic perspective, their relative scores are the same.
What should leaders and managers do with these findings?