{"id":67195,"date":"2018-04-13T23:18:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T23:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.talogy.com\/?p=67195"},"modified":"2025-09-18T22:23:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T22:23:20","slug":"67195","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/talogy.com\/en-gb\/blog\/are-men-or-women-better-leaders-several-studies-reveal-the-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Are men or women better leaders? Several studies reveal the facts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The diversity that women bring to the table in terms of perspective and experience can shape organisational decisions and culture in a positive way. In this blog, I\u2019d like to tackle the idea of individual leadership effectiveness. Is there a gender difference in how men and women lead? And if so, is one gender considered a better leader than another?\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s consider gender stereotypes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It would be challenging to broach this topic without first talking about gender stereotypes. Stereotypes are human, normal, and useful. They are mental shortcuts that help us make sense of our world. We use them all the time and they do not always lead us to make inaccurate judgments about people and situations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when it comes to gender, our society has some well-defined stereotypes about men and women<\/a> and their traits and skills, especially in the workplace. For example, some believe that men are callous and often too proud to ask for help and women are overly dramatic and emotional. Those underlying stereotypical beliefs interfere with our expectations of the genders in different contexts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to leadership, male behaviour is often more in line with what is expected of a strong leader (see \u201cThink Manager-Think Male<\/a>\u201d, Schein (1973, 2007)) while women are expected to be warm and caring and thought to be unwilling to make difficult decisions. How true are these stereotypes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more: 6 core behaviours to help us embrace diversity<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do gender differences exist when it comes to being an effective leader?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To answer this question, we first must ask ourselves what makes an effective leader<\/a> \u2013 regardless of gender. What behaviours, traits, and characteristics are valued in a strong leader? A common model used to understand leadership breaks leadership behaviours down into two large categories \u2013 people and results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blake and Mouton (1964) established a managerial leadership grid which places leaders into quadrants depending on how much emphasis they place on people and results separately. A highly dynamic, charismatic, transformational, and effective leader is high on people and results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within these larger categories are key leadership competencies such as coaching, motivating, and openness in the people grouping, and performance management, analysis, and accountability in the results grouping. If one were to apply gender stereotypes to this model, it might be hypothesised that women leaders would be more effective in the people competencies and men would be more effective in the results competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s consult the research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As you can imagine, researchers have wanted to know if this is true. Studies have examined how men and women are rated on leadership performance across these competencies. A study conducted of over 7,000 leaders using 360 performance data<\/a> to explore gender differences over 16 leadership competencies found that women were rated significantly higher than men on 12 of the 16 competencies (Zenger & Folkman, 2012). These competencies represented both people and results categories. Men were rated higher on strategy development. No differences were seen for technical expertise, innovation, or connecting to the outside world. These results are promising for women leaders who are often seen as less competent and effective \u2013 but this is just one study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, a group of researchers conducted a meta-analysis on gender and leadership effectiveness<\/a>. They pulled together 95 studies to identify consistent trends in the relationships across research that spanned 49 years. They reviewed self and other ratings of performance effectiveness and found that overall, there are no strong significant differences between the genders on leadership effectiveness. When they broke down the data and looked at moderating variables, they did find some interesting differences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n