Leadership Summary
Week 1: Leadership & Gender
Introduction
The CEO Effect
- Almost 30% of firm performance is explained by CEO leadership (including traits & behavior)
- Then 8% corporate effect (product/service they have), 6% industry effect (demand)
o Same for team level supervisors, all have important effect on performance.
o It explains 92% of satisfaction with leader, 30% of team performance 56% of job satisfaction, leader
effectiveness.
Gender-Based Discrimination
- Leadership roles have been mainly performed by men, why?:
o Stereotypes
o Implicit theories
o Role Expectations
1. Gender Stereotypes:
o In-built differences that we hold about men/women, about different interest & characteristics (men like
beer, women like shopping)
o Those are often deep & unconscious and create automatic responses. Used to be useful in evolution as it
allowed us to make fast responses for survival. But not anymore needed. What we learned by experience
and as a child shapes our stereotypes.
▪ Women = stereotype of communal (welfare for others)
▪ Men = stereotype of agentic (confident & assertive)
2. Implicit Leader Theories (Leader Stereotypes):
o Biased beliefs about skills & behaviours necessary for effective leaders
▪ Task oriented, competitive, assertive, decisive
o Think Manager, Think Male → Managers’ stereotypes are similar to gender-stereotypes. Across ages,
leaders are associated with masculine characteristics. Women characteristics are not correlated with
leadership. This mismatch create bias against female leaders.
o Stereotypes over time: overall perceptions didn’t change much over time. But women were seen more as
communal over time. Men were perceived as less competent and less intelligent over time, and
men/women seen as equal rose over the years (especially intelligence, competence, and bit agentic). Men
being agentic stayed the same.
▪ Over years, more women started to work and earned more educations than men (increased
competence & intelligence). Men still have more vertical positions (more power/leader) and
women occupy more % of social work (contributing to communal stereotype).
,3. Role Expectations:
- Gender Roles: are consensual, socially shared expectations about attributes & ideal behavior of women and men.
They contain two types of norms:
o Descriptive Norms (Stereotypes): group X are … (actually do)
▪ men in breadwinner/higher status roles, women in homemaker/lower status roles
o Injunctive Norms (Prescriptive): group X should be/do … (desirable qualities).
- Role Congruity Theory: bias arises from perceived role incongruity (being unsuitable/appropriate) between the
female gender role and leadership roles.
o Women experience bias because of role incongruity, leading to 2 types of prejudice:
▪ Perceiving women as less favourable than men for leadership roles (descriptive norm
violation)
▪ Evaluating behavior that fulfills prescription of being a leader (agentic) less favorable when
enacted by a woman (prescriptive norm violation)
• Women gender role = communal
• Leadership role = agentic.
o Consequences of role incongruity → The Backlash Effect.
▪ Gender role stereotypes are prescriptive (should behave as…), violating the gender stereotype
triggers negative reactions (‘double bind’ for women)
▪ When woman acts as effective leader, she often manifests male-stereotypical, agentic attributes
and fails to manifest female-stereotypical, communal attributes. Meaning she violates the
injunctive norms (prescriptive) of female gender role.
• Women acting as too agentic → seen as narcissist, are liked less
• Women acting communal → seen as appropriate actions to take, but not regarded
suitable for the job/promotion (reaffirms their bias)
o Women have to balance both, this requires extra effort
o Women Face Backlash: Women who use agentic (out-of-role) behaviors, such as self-promotion, may
face penalties like being perceived as less likable or less hirable, or as lacking interpersonal skills.
o Men Have Flexibility: Men's outcomes were similar regardless of whether they used agentic or
communal tactics. This flexibility is potentially explained by men’s higher societal status, which grants
them greater legitimacy, making their influence attempts more successful regardless of the tactic used.
o The "Double Bind": Women often find themselves in a bind: while the workplace may demand agentic
behavior, their gender role prescribes communality. If they restrict themselves to communal tactics, they
may do themselves a disservice in high-stakes situations like negotiations or interviews.
o Violations of gender stereotype leads to:
▪ Less Hiring (self-promotion)
• Evaluated as less competent/ expected for failure, leading to less hiring
opportunities, and decreases willingness for women to apply (self-promotion).
▪ Less Promotion
• Ann Hopkins case: she was found to be too agentic, and this differed with her
woman stereotype. She got rejected a promotion, but eventually she got partnership
after lawsuit.
▪ Less emergence of Leadership:
• Autocratic/intimidating can be okay for men, but when women do it, they’re seen as
narcissists (negative)
▪ Maintaining Double standards:
• Women need to attain higher levels of competence than men to overcome negative
leader competence bias.
- Glass Ceiling: the barrier (invisible ceiling) for women to go through to obtain higher power positions.
o Women have more degrees than men, make up roughly 50/50 of the workforce. Relatively stable ratio in
lower management positions (34.8% of all managers in EU) but the higher you go (top executives) the
more imbalance (5% of highest earning executives in Fortune 500 companies and 0,4% of CEO’s).
o Possible explanations of gender differences in salary, working hours, top management positions.
▪ Men earn more, reinforced by men also making more hours.
▪ Family responsibilities: culture differences/norms, family-oriented values (women stay at
home with kids, women doing voluntary work).
▪ Industry: men often work in higher-paid jobs and women more in health care, education,
kindergarten.
▪ Part-time: Women work more part-time (most companies don’t want this for managerial
positions) → especially in NL. Mostly women work part time when children are young but
often stay that way when they’re older.
▪ Pregnancy leave → delaying factor, which disadvantage women because men in mean time
can have 1 extra year experience.
, • But still a part (6/7%) can’t be explained by the above but is explained by
gender discrimination.
Overcoming Stereotype Effects
- Organization/government:
o Introduce gender quotas → women will more likely apply (part-time and family responsibilities will
change simultaneously), challenges stereotypes
o Move leader roles to more communal → so female gender role is more congruent with leadership. This
shift is already happening (participatory decision making, delegation, teamwork skills)
- What can women do?
o Show agentic qualities
o Show female qualities (to avoid backlash effect)
- What can leaders do?
o Inclusive leadership! (good for all stereotypes)
▪ Facilitate belongingness (let them feel part of the group, support individuals as group
members, ensure justice & equity, share decision-making)
▪ Value their uniqueness to allow them to fully contribute (emphasize they add value to
encourage their diverse contributions, to fully contribute full potential)
• Consequence → follower inclusion & motivation
Inclusive leadership (Article)
- People have the need to be both similar and different from others simultaneously
o → Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, extension of Social Identity Theory.
- Inclusive leadership faciliates this by faciliating belongingness (part of group) and valuing their uniqueness, so
employees feel included, making them feel esteemed & utilized (motivated), and can contribute their full potential.
o Leaders individual difference factor (antecedents):
▪ Pro-diversity beliefs: see diversity as beneficial.
▪ Humility: humble leaders are welcoming, aware of other’s needs, not threatened by others
strenghts.
▪ Cognitive complexity: can see behavior and social information in broad perspective, so they
can regoznize strenghts, while managing complexity of group dynamics to balance
belongingness & uniqueness.
o Inclusive leadership behaviours:
▪ Facilitating belongingness:
• Supporting individuals as group members: make them feel comfortable, let them
know leaders have their best interest, role model care & acceptance.
• Ensuring justice & equity: fair treatment, consider how decisions might
unintentionally create inequity.
• Utilize shared decision-making: share power, broadening consultation, provide group
participation to integrate offered perspectives.
▪ Indicating value for uniqueness:
• Encourage diverse contributions: also those that are not the norm, thereby valuing
what makes group members unique
• Helping members fully contribute: ensure all voices are heard (introverts &
newbie’s) by private conversations, taking account for disabilities, so they feel they
can bring their full selves without hiding differences.
o Outcomes of perceived inclusion:
▪ Work group identification: incorporate workgroup identity with their own → creativity,
performance, lower turnover
▪ Psychological empowerment: feeling of impact & control over activities. They feel they can
express opinions and contribute → job involvement, proactive behavior (creating creativity,
performance, lower turnover)
- Practical implications → IL goes beyond diversity management (which focuses on legal compliance &
representativeness). Indicating value for uniqueness behavior (encouraging diverse contributions & helping
members fully contribute) may require more effort and attention from leaders, as it deviates from traditional
organizational focus on collective goals.
, Gender & Leader Behavior
Leader Effectiveness
- NO significant difference found between male & female leaders effectiveness, suggesting women perform equally
as men (potentially bc they had to meet a higher standard to reach that level).
o Women were less effective in military organizations but more effective in educational, government, and
social services.
A Taxonomy of Leadership Behaviours
- Each leadership need to include these leaders’ behavior: task-oriented, change-oriented, relation-oriented.
- All leadership style you can position somewhere in triangle.
- Women → more relation-oriented & democratic
- Men → more task-oriented & autocratic
Transactional Leadership & Transformational Leadership
Both can motivate people to work hard.
- Transformational
o Idealized Influence (II):
▪ (attribute): demonstrates qualities that motivate respect & pride from association with him/her.
▪ (behavior): communicates values, purpose, and importance of orga’s mission
o Inspirational Motivation (IM): exhibits optimism & excitement about goals and future states.
o Intellectual Stimulation (IS): examines new perspectives for solving problems and tasks.
o Individualized Consideration (IC): focuses on development & mentoring of followers and attends to
their individual needs.
- Transactional
o Contingent Reward: provides rewards for satisfactory performance
o Manage by Exception:
▪ (active): attends to followers’ mistakes & failures to meet standards
▪ (passive): waits until problems become severe before attending to them and intervene
- Laissez-Faire: exhibits frequent absence & lack of involvement
o Effective leaders use both transformational & transactional
- Transformational Leadership & Gender:
o Transformational leadership can be explained by gender for 1% (so quite the same still)
o Women are 1% more transformational (in all dimensions, especially individualized consideration, and
contingent rewards of transactional leadership)
Summary
- Men: more autocratic, more transactional
- Women: more democratic, relations-oriented, more transformational
o BUT: overall both equally effective → so doesn’t matter to go for men or female for effectiveness of the
firm
Influence tactics – Getting What You Want
1. Agentic Tactics: Forceful behaviors that embody aggression, assertiveness, control, directness, and dominance,
demonstrating a concern for oneself.
o Assertiveness
o Self-promotion
2. Communal Tactics: Other-oriented and indirect behaviors that embody interpersonal sensitivity, modesty,
submission, dependence, and concern for others.
o Ingratiation
o Personal appeals
3. Neutral Tactics: not strongly linked to either agentic or communal roles.
Week 1: Leadership & Gender
Introduction
The CEO Effect
- Almost 30% of firm performance is explained by CEO leadership (including traits & behavior)
- Then 8% corporate effect (product/service they have), 6% industry effect (demand)
o Same for team level supervisors, all have important effect on performance.
o It explains 92% of satisfaction with leader, 30% of team performance 56% of job satisfaction, leader
effectiveness.
Gender-Based Discrimination
- Leadership roles have been mainly performed by men, why?:
o Stereotypes
o Implicit theories
o Role Expectations
1. Gender Stereotypes:
o In-built differences that we hold about men/women, about different interest & characteristics (men like
beer, women like shopping)
o Those are often deep & unconscious and create automatic responses. Used to be useful in evolution as it
allowed us to make fast responses for survival. But not anymore needed. What we learned by experience
and as a child shapes our stereotypes.
▪ Women = stereotype of communal (welfare for others)
▪ Men = stereotype of agentic (confident & assertive)
2. Implicit Leader Theories (Leader Stereotypes):
o Biased beliefs about skills & behaviours necessary for effective leaders
▪ Task oriented, competitive, assertive, decisive
o Think Manager, Think Male → Managers’ stereotypes are similar to gender-stereotypes. Across ages,
leaders are associated with masculine characteristics. Women characteristics are not correlated with
leadership. This mismatch create bias against female leaders.
o Stereotypes over time: overall perceptions didn’t change much over time. But women were seen more as
communal over time. Men were perceived as less competent and less intelligent over time, and
men/women seen as equal rose over the years (especially intelligence, competence, and bit agentic). Men
being agentic stayed the same.
▪ Over years, more women started to work and earned more educations than men (increased
competence & intelligence). Men still have more vertical positions (more power/leader) and
women occupy more % of social work (contributing to communal stereotype).
,3. Role Expectations:
- Gender Roles: are consensual, socially shared expectations about attributes & ideal behavior of women and men.
They contain two types of norms:
o Descriptive Norms (Stereotypes): group X are … (actually do)
▪ men in breadwinner/higher status roles, women in homemaker/lower status roles
o Injunctive Norms (Prescriptive): group X should be/do … (desirable qualities).
- Role Congruity Theory: bias arises from perceived role incongruity (being unsuitable/appropriate) between the
female gender role and leadership roles.
o Women experience bias because of role incongruity, leading to 2 types of prejudice:
▪ Perceiving women as less favourable than men for leadership roles (descriptive norm
violation)
▪ Evaluating behavior that fulfills prescription of being a leader (agentic) less favorable when
enacted by a woman (prescriptive norm violation)
• Women gender role = communal
• Leadership role = agentic.
o Consequences of role incongruity → The Backlash Effect.
▪ Gender role stereotypes are prescriptive (should behave as…), violating the gender stereotype
triggers negative reactions (‘double bind’ for women)
▪ When woman acts as effective leader, she often manifests male-stereotypical, agentic attributes
and fails to manifest female-stereotypical, communal attributes. Meaning she violates the
injunctive norms (prescriptive) of female gender role.
• Women acting as too agentic → seen as narcissist, are liked less
• Women acting communal → seen as appropriate actions to take, but not regarded
suitable for the job/promotion (reaffirms their bias)
o Women have to balance both, this requires extra effort
o Women Face Backlash: Women who use agentic (out-of-role) behaviors, such as self-promotion, may
face penalties like being perceived as less likable or less hirable, or as lacking interpersonal skills.
o Men Have Flexibility: Men's outcomes were similar regardless of whether they used agentic or
communal tactics. This flexibility is potentially explained by men’s higher societal status, which grants
them greater legitimacy, making their influence attempts more successful regardless of the tactic used.
o The "Double Bind": Women often find themselves in a bind: while the workplace may demand agentic
behavior, their gender role prescribes communality. If they restrict themselves to communal tactics, they
may do themselves a disservice in high-stakes situations like negotiations or interviews.
o Violations of gender stereotype leads to:
▪ Less Hiring (self-promotion)
• Evaluated as less competent/ expected for failure, leading to less hiring
opportunities, and decreases willingness for women to apply (self-promotion).
▪ Less Promotion
• Ann Hopkins case: she was found to be too agentic, and this differed with her
woman stereotype. She got rejected a promotion, but eventually she got partnership
after lawsuit.
▪ Less emergence of Leadership:
• Autocratic/intimidating can be okay for men, but when women do it, they’re seen as
narcissists (negative)
▪ Maintaining Double standards:
• Women need to attain higher levels of competence than men to overcome negative
leader competence bias.
- Glass Ceiling: the barrier (invisible ceiling) for women to go through to obtain higher power positions.
o Women have more degrees than men, make up roughly 50/50 of the workforce. Relatively stable ratio in
lower management positions (34.8% of all managers in EU) but the higher you go (top executives) the
more imbalance (5% of highest earning executives in Fortune 500 companies and 0,4% of CEO’s).
o Possible explanations of gender differences in salary, working hours, top management positions.
▪ Men earn more, reinforced by men also making more hours.
▪ Family responsibilities: culture differences/norms, family-oriented values (women stay at
home with kids, women doing voluntary work).
▪ Industry: men often work in higher-paid jobs and women more in health care, education,
kindergarten.
▪ Part-time: Women work more part-time (most companies don’t want this for managerial
positions) → especially in NL. Mostly women work part time when children are young but
often stay that way when they’re older.
▪ Pregnancy leave → delaying factor, which disadvantage women because men in mean time
can have 1 extra year experience.
, • But still a part (6/7%) can’t be explained by the above but is explained by
gender discrimination.
Overcoming Stereotype Effects
- Organization/government:
o Introduce gender quotas → women will more likely apply (part-time and family responsibilities will
change simultaneously), challenges stereotypes
o Move leader roles to more communal → so female gender role is more congruent with leadership. This
shift is already happening (participatory decision making, delegation, teamwork skills)
- What can women do?
o Show agentic qualities
o Show female qualities (to avoid backlash effect)
- What can leaders do?
o Inclusive leadership! (good for all stereotypes)
▪ Facilitate belongingness (let them feel part of the group, support individuals as group
members, ensure justice & equity, share decision-making)
▪ Value their uniqueness to allow them to fully contribute (emphasize they add value to
encourage their diverse contributions, to fully contribute full potential)
• Consequence → follower inclusion & motivation
Inclusive leadership (Article)
- People have the need to be both similar and different from others simultaneously
o → Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, extension of Social Identity Theory.
- Inclusive leadership faciliates this by faciliating belongingness (part of group) and valuing their uniqueness, so
employees feel included, making them feel esteemed & utilized (motivated), and can contribute their full potential.
o Leaders individual difference factor (antecedents):
▪ Pro-diversity beliefs: see diversity as beneficial.
▪ Humility: humble leaders are welcoming, aware of other’s needs, not threatened by others
strenghts.
▪ Cognitive complexity: can see behavior and social information in broad perspective, so they
can regoznize strenghts, while managing complexity of group dynamics to balance
belongingness & uniqueness.
o Inclusive leadership behaviours:
▪ Facilitating belongingness:
• Supporting individuals as group members: make them feel comfortable, let them
know leaders have their best interest, role model care & acceptance.
• Ensuring justice & equity: fair treatment, consider how decisions might
unintentionally create inequity.
• Utilize shared decision-making: share power, broadening consultation, provide group
participation to integrate offered perspectives.
▪ Indicating value for uniqueness:
• Encourage diverse contributions: also those that are not the norm, thereby valuing
what makes group members unique
• Helping members fully contribute: ensure all voices are heard (introverts &
newbie’s) by private conversations, taking account for disabilities, so they feel they
can bring their full selves without hiding differences.
o Outcomes of perceived inclusion:
▪ Work group identification: incorporate workgroup identity with their own → creativity,
performance, lower turnover
▪ Psychological empowerment: feeling of impact & control over activities. They feel they can
express opinions and contribute → job involvement, proactive behavior (creating creativity,
performance, lower turnover)
- Practical implications → IL goes beyond diversity management (which focuses on legal compliance &
representativeness). Indicating value for uniqueness behavior (encouraging diverse contributions & helping
members fully contribute) may require more effort and attention from leaders, as it deviates from traditional
organizational focus on collective goals.
, Gender & Leader Behavior
Leader Effectiveness
- NO significant difference found between male & female leaders effectiveness, suggesting women perform equally
as men (potentially bc they had to meet a higher standard to reach that level).
o Women were less effective in military organizations but more effective in educational, government, and
social services.
A Taxonomy of Leadership Behaviours
- Each leadership need to include these leaders’ behavior: task-oriented, change-oriented, relation-oriented.
- All leadership style you can position somewhere in triangle.
- Women → more relation-oriented & democratic
- Men → more task-oriented & autocratic
Transactional Leadership & Transformational Leadership
Both can motivate people to work hard.
- Transformational
o Idealized Influence (II):
▪ (attribute): demonstrates qualities that motivate respect & pride from association with him/her.
▪ (behavior): communicates values, purpose, and importance of orga’s mission
o Inspirational Motivation (IM): exhibits optimism & excitement about goals and future states.
o Intellectual Stimulation (IS): examines new perspectives for solving problems and tasks.
o Individualized Consideration (IC): focuses on development & mentoring of followers and attends to
their individual needs.
- Transactional
o Contingent Reward: provides rewards for satisfactory performance
o Manage by Exception:
▪ (active): attends to followers’ mistakes & failures to meet standards
▪ (passive): waits until problems become severe before attending to them and intervene
- Laissez-Faire: exhibits frequent absence & lack of involvement
o Effective leaders use both transformational & transactional
- Transformational Leadership & Gender:
o Transformational leadership can be explained by gender for 1% (so quite the same still)
o Women are 1% more transformational (in all dimensions, especially individualized consideration, and
contingent rewards of transactional leadership)
Summary
- Men: more autocratic, more transactional
- Women: more democratic, relations-oriented, more transformational
o BUT: overall both equally effective → so doesn’t matter to go for men or female for effectiveness of the
firm
Influence tactics – Getting What You Want
1. Agentic Tactics: Forceful behaviors that embody aggression, assertiveness, control, directness, and dominance,
demonstrating a concern for oneself.
o Assertiveness
o Self-promotion
2. Communal Tactics: Other-oriented and indirect behaviors that embody interpersonal sensitivity, modesty,
submission, dependence, and concern for others.
o Ingratiation
o Personal appeals
3. Neutral Tactics: not strongly linked to either agentic or communal roles.
