Academic perspective Comment
There is still a lingering
(yet false) assumption
among some that men
make better leaders
For many years it has been clear
that the number of female
senior leaders, both in the public
and private sectors, has been
disproportionally low compared to
men. There are many factors that
drive this – including talent
identification and promotion
criteria often favouring men,
the education system promoting
certain sectors or roles as more
appropriate for women, and
self-selection by women.
Steps are being taken to address all
of these. But there is still a lingering
(yet false) assumption among some
that men make better leaders.
Societal change has driven the
transformation of our organisations
to become places where command
and control is no longer the way to
optimise performance. Success is
now more likely to be delivered by
a consultative and relationshipfocused
approach based on
employee engagement.
Research by Zenger and Folkman
from 2011 (updated in 2019)
clearly shows that women are
more effective on most of the top
competencies of good leadership
– including taking initiative,
inspiring and motivating others,
and building relationships.
But interestingly these
differentials are not constant.
Everyone changes over their
careers and develops capability. By
looking at the ages of those in the
study it’s possible to track the
differences between men and
women in terms of their leadership
capability at different stages in
their careers.
When they’re 20-year-olds both
men and women have the same level
of leadership effectiveness. However,
by about 25 men are more effective
than women. But from that point on
women develop and catch up, and by
age 40 they are on par with men.
After that they become increasingly
more effective than men to a peak of
around 9% more effective at 60.
After this the differential declines.
This pattern reflects what I have
seen: young men strongly pushing
ahead in their careers initially and, in
general, women taking more time to
quietly build their capability and
confidence. At about 40 women’s
experience and confidence have got
to the levels where they can be used
as effectively as men use theirs.
But it’s not all downhill for men,
as the gap closes again after 60 – by
which time many men have learnt
that it’s about the leader inspiring
people to care and give their best not
just telling them to do the job.
This dynamic is not only
interesting for women to know
about. It poses many questions that
need to be considered to make our
leaders and organisations more
effective. Two that come to mind are:
how can we help women build their
experience and above all confidence
so they are as good as men in their
twenties? And then how can we help
men more effectively build their selfawareness
to be more relationshipfocused
so they are as good as
women from age 40 to 60?
This is probably a dynamic
already shifting; those currently at
these points in their careers are
soon going to be replaced by new
generations who take a different
view. As Millennials get more senior,
and Generation Z become a large
part of the workforce and take up
their first management roles, the
ability to inspire and get people to
care about outcomes so they give
their best is going to become
more important.
Luckily those in junior leadership
roles are likely to come from the
same generation as their teams so
their views on leadership will be
more aligned.
As always it is the gap between
the perspectives of senior leaders
and others where generational
differences will be largest and the
risk of misalignment in effective
leadership greatest. But the moral
for senior male leaders aged between
40 and 60 is: your female colleagues
are the ones to watch. HR
Chris Roebuck is honorary visiting professor of transformational leadership at Cass Business School, City
University of London. This is the third in a three-part series, read the others at bit.ly/HRroebuckwomen
hrmagazine.co.uk October 2019 HR 13
/hrmagazine.co.uk