What Makes Women Leaders Different and Why Should Organizations Take Notice?

I recently read an excerpt from a research paper from Catalyst regarding, Women In S&P 500 Companies, noting that while women make-up 44% of the overall S&P 500 labor force, and 36% of first or mid-level leaders and managers in those companies, they represent only 25% of senior level executives, and hold only 20% of board seats. Only 6% are CEOs. Six percent.

If women make up the majority of the US population, and earn 60% of all undergraduate and master’s degrees in the US today (Corley, 2017), what then, is holding us back from having more roles at the helm of these large companies? According to the Rockefeller Foundation (Global Strategy Group, 2016) more than 70% of American’s recognize that having women in more leadership positions would have significant positive impacts on the wage gap, changing policies and a diverse workforce. Why? What makes women leaders different, and why should organizations take notice?

When we can see leadership as a set of behaviors, skills and talents, naturally given or home-grown, then the conversation about who might make a better leader is not really about gender, is it? In my experience as a long-time executive coach, I find leadership behaviors are more related to those that are demonstrated, either intuitively or learned, through each person’s distinctive characteristics, motivations and style. Using highly accurate psychometric tools and leadership competency models like Lumina Learning’s suite, I’ve seen many male and female “portraits” that resemble each other, regardless of the fact that the genders are different. And I also have a sense of what some women leaders may be doing differently than male leaders, and vice versa, given these distinctive characteristics and motivations.

For example, in a recent white paper titled “Why Organizations Should Hire More Women Leaders”, the Lumina Spark model of 24 personality qualities was mentioned as evidence suggesting that different genders score higher or lower on the use of different qualities or behaviors. Men tend to score higher on the behaviors such as Competitive, Tough and Logical, which drive an Outcome-Focused motivation. Their differences in other motivations and behaviors in the Lumina model suggest men may tend to be greater risk-takers and more abstract in their thinking.

When it comes to a preference for focusing on People, having a natural Empathetic quality shows up more among women than men, suggesting women may tend to be naturally more compassionate. Long before the Pandemic happened, all through 2020, and now well into the first quarter of the 2021 ‘recovery’, the message being delivered to leaders by every leadership guru is the need for empathy, empathy, empathy. Having supported both men and women leaders over many years to help build this quality, I know for certain it isn’t easy to just develop it. Yet it is this empathetic nature that some suggest those who have it make better leaders.

Additionally, research conducted by Lumina Learning where participants engaged in a 360-degree evaluation to understand their effectiveness, found (not surprisingly perhaps), that women were rated significantly better than men on the majority of effective leadership competencies across Lumina Leader’s four domains. In fact, when looking at their 16 differentiating leadership competencies, women excelled in the majority of areas (not that the men didn’t, but the point is, the women ALSO did).

So back to the original notion that, if we look at who has the most effective leadership behaviors, gender aside, and then put the right leaders in the right roles, throughout the organization, the data suggests that adding more women leaders could in fact impact the overall effectiveness of an organization. Lumina’s research underscores that while genders are different, each has unique qualities that can ultimately support an individual or organization’s success. But then again, this is not rocket science is it? Seems pretty intuitive to me. For more information on how Lumina tools can help bring out the best in your leaders, or for a copy of the white paper “Why Organizations Should Hire More Women Leaders”, send me a message or connect with me here.

All the Best,

Loretta Stagnitto