Perceptions Shape Women’s Paths to Leadership

Perceptions Shape Women’s Paths to Leadership

A new study by Bain and Co. reveals a significant gap between men and women in their perceptions of the extent of parity in opportunity for men and women to attain management and leadership roles. The survey of over 1800 business professionals was reported in Wall Street Journal on January 28, 2010 and School of Management Professor Kolb was quoted extensively. See http://bit.ly/wsjlead

The Wall Street Journal reported findings that “81% of men said opportunities to move to middle management are gender neutral, compared with just 52% of women. Similarly, 66% of men said promotions to the executive level are equally attainable by both sexes, versus 30% of women. As for appointments to leadership and governance roles, 69% of men and 31% of women said consideration is granted evenly among the sexes.”

Yet, the stark reality counters these perceptions. Catalyst’s 2009 census of Fortune 500 companies shows that only 3% of chief executive officer, 13% of all executive-officer, and 15% of board positions are held by women. The even more discouraging news is that these numbers have changed little since 2000.

Given this reality, it is disturbing that a majority of men, and even a third of women, believe that there is full parity of opportunity for advancement. This perception will lead organizations to be less vigilant in their efforts to bring about change that ensures unfettered opportunities for women to advance to leadership roles. And, as often happens, it will reinforce the popular narrative that places the onus of responsibility for lack of advancement onto women and not on the organization – ‘women are not at the top because they do not have what it takes to get there.’

Our research at the Simmons School of Management and its Center for gender in Organizations challenges this narrative and shows that subtle gender dynamics still shape women’s opportunities and paths to leadership. Change will only happen as managers (and women in business) come to understand these dynamics and make strategic interventions to change them.

Simmons School of Management Professor Deborah Kolb shared this perspective in the WSJ article:

“ ‘Perceptions may play a role in women lagging behind men in advancing their careers’, says Deborah M. Kolb, a professor specializing in women and leadership at Simmons School of Management in Boston. Ms. Kolb says studies have consistently shown women are seen by bosses and colleagues—men and women alike—as being less capable of serving in leadership posts than men, despite evidence to the contrary. ‘Women often get asked to take career detours, to go into areas like human resources, to be on the diversity committee,’ she says. ‘Men get asked to take on strategic-development activities.’ Similarly, studies suggest that women are disproportionately assigned to oversee change within businesses—assignments that pose greater risk of failure, adds Ms. Kolb. ‘They get asked to clean up messes, so they might not have a track record of success and mistakes may follow them,’ she says.

Excellence in Women’s Leadership: The importance of vision

Excellence in Women’s Leadership: The importance of vision

Harvard Business Reviews’ January 2009 issue on “Transforming Leaders” summarized a recent study comparing the leadership skills of men and women executives. The study shows that women are perceived to outperform men in most dimensions of leadership except for one – vision.

INSEAD conducted a global study of 2,816 executives’ 360o assessments of their leadership skills in which 22,244 subordinates, peers, and supervisors evaluated the executives’ leadership skills. Twenty percent of the executives and 27% of the observers were women. Similar to earlier studies, they found that female leaders were rated higher than male leaders in 7 out of 10 dimensions of leadership from both male and female leaders. These findings demonstrate, once again, that women are perceived to be successful in leadership roles.

However, the study revealed one critical area where women were not rated as highly as men — vision. Male peers, in particular, gave women significantly lower scores in vision than they gave men. This perceived deficiency for women leaders is important. First, the research shows that envisioning is perceived by observers as critical to effective leadership and carries more weight than other dimensions when evaluating overall leadership effectiveness. And, second, envisioning is what enables a leader to identify opportunities and obstacles, set strategic direction, and mobilize people to achieve exceptional results.

The researchers conclude that in order to continue to build the ranks of women in leadership, women need to give higher priority to developing their vision and strategy and communicating it more broadly across the organization, particularly to peers and supervisors.

This is an important “wake up call” for all of us in leadership roles.