Effects of Gender on Effective Corporate Leadership - Research Paper Example

The study has focused on traits for effective leadership. The target of the study was to examine the differences between male and female leadership traits. It has laid emphasis on the four leadership traits which include communication, decision-making, influence and confidence to examine how these traits are used differently between male and female leaders. The objective was to examine why most women have not been able to attain senior positions in leadership and the factors that limit their potential to rise to top positions. Women stereotyping, lack of lack of women mentors, social resistances and gender roles have been discussed as some of the challenges affecting efficiency in women leadership. The conclusion of the study has not established that the differences in leadership traits between men and women reflect on the situational differences of the organizations that require different management styles exhibited by men and women. The organizations managements should reexamine the potential of expanding business operations by including women in the senior position. Introduction Leadership is a process of collective influence whereby one person solicits the aid and support of followers and from other leaders to get organization’s goals accomplished.1 Effective leadership requires closer interaction between the leader and a follower, in a way, that they can easily influence the course of action of their followers to achieve a particular goal.2 Various studies advocate effective leadership as characterized by intrinsic values and traits possessed by certain groups of people and their efficiency of application in the business environment to achieve desired goals or to solve organization crisis.3 Leaders are known to use different strategies and leadership styles of management and, of course, the outcome of their practices differ across the organizations. Although there are no specific styles that can be termed superior to others, the measure of leadership efficiency depends on the nature of the organization, ability of leaders to empower workers, efficiency of achieving organizational goals and team building efficiency among others.4 Researchers in leadership advocate the existence of differences between male and female leadership and the differences of the outcome of such leadership.5 Besides the differences in leadership styles between male and female leaders there are other challenges limiting the performance of women from achieving efficiency in leadership.6 However, considering the leadership history and the current trend across the globe male leaders have continued to dominate in corporate leadership despite the fact that women possess excellent leadership qualities such as communication, decision-making, confidence and ability to influence others. This study will be focusing on the main differences between male from female their leadership styles by examining leadership traits for effective leadership. The study is based on the assumption that women are more likely to interact freely with their followers and influence their course of action while male impose their ideologies on their followers establishing autocratic leadership in the organizations.7 Effective leadership is determined by other underlying factors apart from personal leadership attributes. The document will focus on female competence leadership traits and an assessing of factors limiting effective leadership among the women. Background Gender differences at workplace have been and still are big issues of concern that has elicited claims of discrimination of one gender by the members of the opposite gender.8 The term gender as used in this context refers to female and female sex. Since time immemorial female gender has suffered severe discrimination at the workplace through sexual harassment, public ridicule, low payment compared to male counterparts in similar positions and an unwarranted dismissal among others.9 The global trend in leadership has shown men as the leaders since most of the organizations are headed by men despite women being the majority in global population census and their number in the labor force being almost equal to men.10 Women accounts for about fifty-one percent of the population and about forty-seven of the labor force. However, women representation at the top corporate level remains very low compared to men. In the year 2000, the top level women leaders accounted for “12.5 percent of fortune 500 corporate officers and they accounted for 11.7 percent of the board of director membership.11” Despite women’s call for gender equality in all spheres of life, the same has not been reflected effectively in various corporate leadership positions. Various theories have been developed to suggest the characteristics of effective leadership and the traits that determine effective leadership. Leaders use different styles to achieve intended performance in the organizations.12 However, researches have shown that there is no individual leadership style that can achieve excellent performance in all organizations. Successful leaders use a combination of traits to achieve excellent performance in their organizations.13 Therefore, the success of organizational leadership depends with personal qualities to influence the workers and mobilize organization's resources towards the achievement of the set goals. Women seem to possess most of the essential traits for effective leadership, but “to rise to the more senior positions, one must be and has to be seen as a leader.”14 The escalating global competition among the organizations requires the organizations to increase the efficiency of managing resources including human resources.15 The interest of the organizations is to tap the most talented workers irrespective of gender or background in order to remain competitive technologically in other aspects of operations. Effective management plays a significant role in developing organizations capacity to achieve global competitiveness.16 However, despite the women endeavor to rise to the top positions and the desire of organization management to get the most competitive work force women representation at senior positions has still remained low across the globe. According to the projection made by the Catalyst organization in America the number of women in the senior positions in the organizations is expected to increase to 27.4 per cent in the year 2020.17 The problem is not only in appointive positions but has been reflected in elective positions where most of the powers to elect leaders are held by women. Women are gaining efficiency in creating wealth across the globe. In addition, “women globally control at least 64% of the consumer spending” while in “some countries women drive over 70% of household spending decisions.18” The trend of consumer demand and the role of women in driving demands offers corporate an opportunity to expand market by influencing demand. The increasing global competition for market requires corporate to rethink of the impact women could have on their organizations if more women were to be included in the corporate leadership. According to Patel & Buiting, “having women on boards will give corporations the competitive advantage to create products and services that will better meet their customer’s needs.19” Furthermore, in most of the Western countries majority of the graduates are women; thus, they have adequate knowledge to manage organizations. A survey of 500 fortune companies in the United States established that corporations had greater gender diversification achieved better performance than those led by men.20 Differences In Leadership Traits Gender Men and women exhibit psychological differences that affect the way they communicate, act and influence the community around them and the influence of these differences on leadership styles.21 Men and women uphold different values on effective communication skills. The biological and sex differences between men and women does not give any gender advantage to leadership over the other. Various researchers have argued that women have similar potential with men to achieve equal performance and with similar effectiveness.22 There are assertions that men and women have similar leadership behavior. However, stereotypes places women lower than men in leadership ability.23 Many people have assumed that masculinity is a characteristic of leadership thus men have a role to lead. This stereotype has disadvantaged women by denying them a chance to become leaders since they are assumed incapable of leading effectively. Women are not given equal opportunities in education and employment with male counterparts. In addition accessibility to credit facilities is a big challenge to women thus denying them an opportunity to run their businesses and rise to top positions.24 1. Communication Traits Communication in a crucial leadership tool because it enables leaders to share their ideas, goals and strategies with their followers. Leaders who can express their ideas and concerns effectively win the trust of the people by convincing them of what can work and does not work well.25 On the other hand, people with good ideas which they cannot share with others effectively due to poor communication skills may not achieve their goals because they are unable to convince other for support. Furthermore, leaders are involved in training other people to improve their efficiency of performance.26 Therefore, communication is vital for the leaders to train their followers and interact with them to get views of other people. For example, marketing leaders can use communication as a tool for gathering customers’ views that assist the organization to redesign products to meet customer wishes. The difference between male and female communication styles influence their quality of leadership. Women take communication as a tool for establishing social cohesion and relationships. They are courteous, more expressive and cautious when communicating and enables them to interact with the society to win acceptance and establish relationships with others.27 Through communication, women create and promote intimate relationships with members of the society by sharing issues and problems of concern to the community. This makes women effective in solving conflicts because they like listening to others and also attract other people to reason with them. On the other hand, men view communication just as means to enhance their dominance and achieve their goals. Men are power-thirst and self-confident and tend to operate differently and independently. In order to avoid further conflicts, men are likely to provide solutions in crisis than women. The ability to share one's ideas with other people is an excellent trait in corporate leadership if utilized effectively.28 Although men are likely to give a quick solution in a crisis compared to women, organizations with women representatives are more likely to attract community and win their trust through effective interactions steered by women leaders. This makes it possible for the organizations to acquire new ideas from the society and gain new understanding of the challenges facing their clients.29 Men and women have different values, goals and needs they intend to achieve in their communication.30 The differences in communication style used by men and women reflect weakness and strength in all cases. It becomes an issue of concern when solving crisis because men tend to influence the situation by offering the solution while women expects to win sympathy and understanding from the other party.31 These differences can rhyme well in corporate leadership if they are utilized effectively to improve performance of the organization. Communication style of women can be utilized to win favor of the client and strengthen the relationship within the organization. Offering a solution in a crisis may not be the best option because it may leave other issues unsolved which may erupt later and cause the organization more damages. Therefore, discussing the issues over may result to the long-term solution owing to the fact that female communication results to effective interaction and intimate relationships among the warring partners.32 There are numerous challenges that may influence efficiency of communication and women leadership in the organization.33 For example, gender stereotypes may impact negatively on the female communication effectiveness and their overall of efficiency in leadership. In most cases, society does not take women seriously since they were taught from childhood that men are the head and deserves respect while women should obey men and listen to what men say.34 Therefore, it is hard for women to exert influence in the organization where followers are reluctant to take orders from a woman. 2. Ability To Interact And Influence Others Men are focused on tasks thus they tend to be authoritative since they believe what they have decided has to be achieved.35 They assign their followers tasks and are unwilling to settle for anything less than their bargain. This enables them to retain their powers and continue to exert influence in the organizations. The “task-oriented” attitude of men draws them far from their followers and takes little or no concern for their workers.36 However, male leaders mainly achieve their goals because they use other strategies to get things done the way they desired them to be done. For example, men leaders understand the power or rewarding performance and they use various strategies to motivate their workers. This makes leaders good transactional leaders whose role is to delegate tasks and rewarding the achievers and punishing those who underperform.37 On the other hand, women interact and influence the society thus building capacity for effective leadership. Through interaction with workers, women leaders express their concern for workers and this serves as a motivating factor that keep workers focused on their goals.38 Interactive leadership style applied by women brings the workers together to solve a common problem. This approach enables the leaders to share powers and communicate effectively with their followers; it promotes worker's participation, motivates workers and enhances self-worth of others.39 The organizations’ management definition of effective leadership has not taken keen interest on some feminine characteristics associated with interactive leadership into effective leadership traits. Lack of inclusion of interactive style in leadership traits has presented women as weak in leadership even though the same characteristics has been viewed as a strength if possessed by men.40 The ability to relate with other people is a very effective leadership trait that portrays women as friendly and concerned with people’s needs. This is unlike men whose concerns are performance of tasks at the expense of workers. Women have higher chances of coordinating and motivating workers to achieve better performance and promote employee satisfaction without incurring the organization a lot of motivation expenses. Furthermore, women possess almost all traits considered masculine such as assertiveness and sensitivity. The ability of women to influence their followers can suit them as transformational leaders since they can effectively inspire their followers, set goals for them and leave them to pursue those goals with leader’s empowerment.41 However, there are other factors limiting the effective of women leadership despite their ability to interactive and influence their followers. Women have “more docile unleader-like impression” that portrays them as incompetent in the leadership.42 Most women are taught feminine roles at a tender age and that influence they future lives in terms of attitude towards certain roles. For example, in some communities women are taught to humble themselves and not to be so talkative in public. However, to be a successful leader one has to interact and share the ideas with workers thus consider as a weakness for women and limit them from taking leadership positions.43 The corporate culture undermines the women effort to take leadership positions. Most of the work environment favors men as leaders at the expense of women because they react negatively to women and are more reluctant to accept delegations from the women leaders.44 The organization's cultures are resistant to change and have continued to protect masculine powers by rewarding them handsomely while women holding similar positions are more likely to get lesser rewards compared to male counterparts.45 As a result, the corporate culture has undermined the effort of women to take senior positions in the organizations based on their qualifications and determination. 3. Confidence Trait Leadership entails critical decision making process and in most cases the outcome of those decisions are full of uncertainty.46 Sometimes things may work according to expectations and at times they work against 47wishes of the leaders. Whatever the outcome of the decision taken or one is about to take leaders are supposed to be calm and hopeful because lack of confidence discourages their followers and makes them lose trust with that leader. Confident leaders keep their followers focused on the main organization’s goals and makes the followers understand setbacks in business are ordinary and they signals the areas that require change of strategies.48 Therefore, without confidence leaders cannot build and motivate teams in their organizations or achieve their goals. Furthermore, most investment decisions involve a lot of risks and without confidence in whatever decision one intends to take the leader cannot be able to share the idea with others or commit organization’s resources into it. Therefore, since male and female leaders differ in levels of confidence their efficiency of leadership vary.49 Effective leadership requires a lot of confidence with one-self and with others. Women have exhibited a lot of confidence through their struggles to take senior positions in a society dominated by male leaders.50 In united states, the current states of women representation in corporate has reached twenty percent and the projection shows by the year 2020 it is likely to reach about forty per cent. Women have confidently established businesses that are providing their families with sources of income even though the society favors resource allocation to men.51 It through confidence that women are competing effectively with men midst several challenges undermining their struggles. Organizational leaders are required to portray confidence in what they do and trust their followers so that they can achieve their goals. With confidence leaders will be able to invest organizational resources in various ventures and hope for good returns. Although women tend to be risk averse, they invest resources in activities they confidently expect good returns with minimal risk of loss. On the contrary, men are risk lovers and end up investing resources in risky ventures thus raising chances of a huge loss for the businesses.52 With only a few women representatives in the senior positions, they experience strong resistance in their endeavor to exert influence in the organizations and consequently they lose confidence to lead effectively.53 Organizations are resistant to promoting women to the senior position thus killing their hopes of ever becoming senor leaders. Some of those who feel discouraged and frustrated by organization resistance to provide room for women promotion quits those organizations and seek employment elsewhere or start personal businesses.54 However, the challenge of seeking employment in another organization is a limiting factor to getting promotion by itself since most organizations require a person to work for some time before they get promotion to take senior positions in the organization. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that women who shift from one organization to another will get promotion at their new workplace.55 4. Ability To Make Decision Decision making is one of the key duties of the organizational leaders.56 A successful leader should be able to make a decision quickly as the situation warrants. Delays in decision making can be very costly for the organization thus leader must be able to gather all essential tools and make a decision as fast as they can.57 Even though, leaders may make a decision and later think it was not a decision they should stick to it to see it bear fruits. The only way a leader can inspire his or her followers is by being able to make a decision and to adhere to it regardless of the circumstances. However, there is a difference in the men and women make decision and so their leadership qualities are also different.58 Women are smart in decision making because they take time to assess the situation and probability of the outcome before taking stance. Through effective communication and ability to interact with other people, women can get views of the people and assess the available alternatives before making decision.59 In addition, women can easily consult their colleagues before they make decision thus minimizing the chances of making wrong decision. This is unlike men leaders who can choose to make a decision without consultation just to exert influence of power in the organization.60 Therefore, women can make effective decisions through consultation and enable the business to achieve improved performance. The male and female leaders differ in their potential to influence their followers and implement decisions. The difference between men and women representation at the top levels in the organization is probably due to a combination factors both factual and perceived.61 Leadership requires constant mentorship from experienced leaders who serve as role models to the upcoming leaders. “Old boy network” has favored the men in leadership because male leaders are out to assist each other with mentorship and problem solving while female leadership suffer deficiency of role models as far as leadership is concerned.62 The issue of “old boy network” has propagated the culture of resistance to change by empowering men to improve their efficiency in leadership. Conclusion The organization leaders use different styles of leadership depending on the situation and ability of a leader. Organizational leaders possess different traits that affect their management styles and impact organizations performance. There is no individual leadership style that can be assumed to be superior to others. Men and women exhibit differences in their leadership traits such as communication skills, influence, confidence and decision making ability and these influences their overall leadership efficiency. The differences between male and female leaders portray situational differences and can be utilized for effective performance of the organization since different organizations require different management styles. The differences in leadership traits across male and female gender imply the differences in leadership styles essential for various organizations. However, women leaders encounter other challenges outside their managerial competence that undermines their efficiency in leadership. The social resistance, gender stereotypes, lack access to resources, resistance from male counterparts and lack of female role models are some of the challenges that influences women efficiency in leadership. Further studies can be conducted to show different types of organizations that can support women leadership styles. Also, further research can establish why women are reluctant to support their colleagues to rise to senior positions despite the women struggle for gender equity. Bibliography Heath, Chip and Heath, Dan, "Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work" (Random House of Canada 2013), 1-320. Kouzes, James and Posner, Barry, "The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations" (USA: John Wiley & Sons 2012), 1-416. Ludger, Helms, "Comparative Political Leadership" (UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2012), 1-326. Morse, Ricardo, S., Buss, Terry, F. and Kinghorn, Morgan, C., "Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century" (USA: M.E. Sharpe 2007), 1-365. Patel, Gita and Buiting, Sophie, “Gender Differences in Leadership Styles and the Impact within Corporate Boards” (Harvard Business School 2013), 1-26. 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