Women leaders—challenges,successes, and other insights from the top

The reasons for the persistent lag of women as leaders are complex. Attrition is an issue for women for many reasons, including traditional gender roles that may affect how women are perceived and the choices they have available (or they make), a lack of role models, the undervaluing of women's traditional communication and leadership styles, and organizational culture. Within medicine (clinical environments) and academic medicine (medical school and clinical environments), it is clear that the lack of women in leadership positions is more than a pipeline or a labyrinth problem. We undertook this case study to better understand the current challenges experienced by women aspiring to leadership positions in medicine and academic medicine. What types of challenges do women face as they move up in an academic or medical environment? And which challenges impact more than others in attaining leadership roles in these organizations: race and ethnicity, differences in leadership style and skills, mentorship and network, life experiences and family responsibilities, organizational culture, or gender? Our study addresses a gap in the literature by examining the leadership experiences of eight successful women in the fields of medicine and academic medicine. The emerging insights from these leaders may be useful for women from diverse backgrounds aspiring to be senior leaders in the future.     

Add Women,Transform Academe

The current article suggests that universities in the southeastern region suffer from a lack of inclusivity, particularly regarding women in leadership positions, that undermines their efforts to be as progressive and relevant as they should be. Since women make up less than a critical mass of academic leadership, they are absent from decision‐making arenas, their contributions are undervalued, and their participation in policy‐making conversations continues to be stalled.     

Leadership change and shareholder value: How markets react to the appointments of women

This study examines whether the appointment of women into senior leadership positions has a more positive effect on share price than the appointment of men into equivalent positions. Our dependent variable is the degree of change in share price following the announcement of men and women into senior leadership positions. Although market reactions to corporate events represent a complex process, we argue that changes in stock price represent a barometer for how investors assess the decision's potential effect on a corporation's short‐ and long‐term economic viability. We find a significant spike in stock price following the announcement of women into top leadership positions. The size and direction of change in stock price, however, is moderated by the gender composition of the industry. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Shatter the glass ceiling: Women may make better managers

There is considerable evidence that women encounter a glass ceiling or barrier to advancement into the executive ranks of organizations. Although many expected this barrier to be obliterated with the large influx of women entering the work force over the last two decades, little change has actually occurred in the most senior ranks. In most sectors, women still comprise less than 5 percent of board directorships and corporate officerships. This article focuses on emerging evidence which indicates that the trend in U.S. corporations toward high-involvement work teams, consensus decision making, and empowerment may actually benefit the leadership styles that women already exhibit. Preliminary evidence is also provided which indicates that female managers are seen as more transformational than their male counterparts—a leadership style that has been shown to have a strong positive impact on individual, group, and organizational performance.     

Leadership and management effectiveness: A multi-frame,multi-sector analysis

Bolman and Deal (1984, 1991) have developed four perspectives, or frames, for understanding organizations and leadership: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. This paper reports two studies that operationalize that model. The first study uses critical incidents written by managers to assess how many and which frames they use. Most incidents show the use of one or two frames; very few contain all four. In every population, the structural frame was used frequently while the symbolic frame was rarely evident. Across different populations, the use of the human resource and political frames varied substantially. The second study used survey instruments to assess managers' frame orientations. Regression analyses show that their orientations, as perceived by colleagues, are differentially related to perceived effectiveness as manager and leader. Managerial effectiveness is related to an emphasis on rationality and organizational structure. Leadership effectiveness is linked to symbols and culture. For men and women in comparable positions, gender is unrelated to leadership orientations or to their effectiveness as managers or leaders.     

Recruiting leaders: an analysis of leadership advertisements

Recruiting the right leaders is an important challenge for organisations. How do organisations find these leaders? This article looks at the recruitment of leaders through advertisements. We address to what extent the ‘vocabulary of leadership’ originating in influential leadership theories is actively used in communication about leadership positions. All job advertisements (4,217) that appeared in a consistent source in the public domain in the UK (Times newspaper) were collected for a period of 15 months. Out of the total number of advertisements, 1,390 were advertisements for leadership positions (chairman, CEO or director). The information in these advertisements was recorded and content analysed. The analyses highlight what terminology organisations use in attracting the desired leaders. In general, ‘people oriented’ and ‘transformational’ terms are used far more than terms describing ‘task oriented’ or ‘transactional’ qualities. Differences were found between advertisements for CEO and lower level leader (director) positions that seem to reflect the difference in hierarchical level and magnitude of the leadership responsibility of these roles.     

Developing leaders rather than managers for the global marketplace

The key to successfully competing in the global marketplace may be staffing key expatriate positions with accomplished /skilled leaders. Past research has focused on preparing managers to successfully expatriate to foreign assignment and repatriate back to the United States. The high failure rate and general lack of effectiveness of many expatriate managers may be attributed to not having a cultural match between the assignment and the leadership style of the expatriate. This article explains the complex issues associated with multicultural leadership and proposes a diagnostic leadership matrix based upon internal and external cultural constraints.     

The intercultural communication cultural immersion experience: Preparing leaders for a global future

The dynamics of globalization mean we face a reality wherein leaders are called upon to communicate effectively in cultural situations unfamiliar to them. This situation brings new challenges for communication and leadership educators. Our article describes a cultural immersion experience called The Cagli Project, where communication and leadership students learn effective intercultural communication skills for leadership formation while studying in Italy. The philosophical and experiential aspects of the program are described along with leadership outcomes. The article ends with a discussion of the transferability of this model to alternative programs. Perhaps nothing has had a more profound effect on human communication and hence leadership in the past half century than the movement of people around the globe and the growing diversity of world society. Globalization is the mantra that seems to be driving much that is new in higher education today. It has its roots in the “global economy” and seems most relevant to the business disciplines, but there is a sub‐text to globalization that resonates throughout all our institutions, and that is diversity (Caputo, 2011).     

Leadership for Collaboration

Abstract

‘Leadership’ and ‘collaboration’ are integral to twenty-first century governance and management but, despite a growing literature, understanding about leadership for collaboration is hampered by a lack of specificity and nuance in theory and empirical research. This article responds to these limitations by working within an interpretive framework and employing Q-method to uncover different interpretations of leadership for collaboration operant among public managers in Wales. The article uses the concept of situated agency to explain why public managers offer diverse interpretations of leadership for collaboration despite working within the same governance framework, and to identify challenges to public managers in determining appropriate leadership for collaboration.     

Leadership learning: Crucial conversations,next steps,and thoughts for consideration

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Combating the English language deficit: the labour market experiences of migrant women in Australia

This article takes a multilevel perspective on the labour market issues and challenges that migrant women from non‐English speaking backgrounds (NESB) encounter in Australia. The article is based on two main arguments: (1) a much more complex picture emerges when we look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and migration, and its implications for the labour market experiences of NESB women and (2) single level conceptualisations of diversity management within the domain of organisational or legal policies are inadequate to address the multilevel challenges faced by NESB women. The article presents a qualitative study in which we theorise our findings through a multilevel construct, examining the macro‐national, meso‐organisational, and micro‐individual challenges that NESB women, originating from Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, face in the Australian labour market.     

Bouncing up: The development of women leaders’ resilience

Although there are preliminary indications that resilience is a key factor for women on their way to top leadership positions, research on this topic is scarce. To narrow this research gap, we applied an exploratory interview study focusing on the development of women leaders’ resilience. We conducted 25 biographical interviews with women in top leadership positions in medium and large companies listed in Germany. Through a qualitative content analysis, we identified three critical phases for the development of women leaders’ resilience—early life, early career, and upper leadership—as well as phase-specific resilience factors—i.e., individual, situational, and behavioral factors. We integrated these findings in a process model that provides insights into the interlinkages of the different phases and factors and can serve as a starting point for future research.     

Victimisation and agency: the social construction of union women’s leadership

This article interrogates the notion that women union leaders lead differently. Despite significant variation in the union movements in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, similar discourses on women’s union leadership emerge in all five countries. Based on a materialist social construction approach which supports a recognition of difference without reference to essentialist ideas about women’s nature, this article seeks to identify what may be common across these countries to explain this phenomenon. The article argues that the fact that women face discrimination in unions, on the one hand, and organise as a constituency and have access to women‐only education, on the other, supports the development of transformational leadership among women unionists, even across diverse contexts and cultures. Unpacking union women’s leadership practices in this way reveals a dialectic of victimisation and agency.     

Leaders' negative emotions and leadership styles influencing subordinates' well-being

Emotions are an important aspect of organizational life. However emotional issues, particularly negative emotions, have traditionally been largely neglected in organizational life. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles, and leaders' negative emotions perceived by the subordinates. The aim is also to investigate the influence of leadership styles on the subordinates' overall psychological health and well-being. The result challenges some of the earlier findings, suggesting that there is a need for a better understanding of how contextual factors might intervene in the relation between leaders' negative emotions, leadership styles, and subordinates' well-being.     

Assessing public leadership styles for innovation: a comparison of Copenhagen,Rotterdam and Barcelona

This article explores which leadership qualities public managers regard as important for public innovation. It is based on a survey of 365 senior public managers in Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Barcelona. Five perspectives on leadership were identified and tested using a number of items. Some of these proved to be more robust than others. Analysis of the three cities reveals a nuanced set of leadership styles, which include a transformational style, and one that is more dedicated to motivating employees, risk-taking and including others in decision-making. This suggests the need for more research on leadership and public-sector innovation.     

Five Steps to Leading Your Team in the Virtual COVID-19 Workplace

The emergence of COVID-19 has presented employees and employers new challenges as many employees and managers were forced to work in a remote environment for the first time. For many reasons, managing virtual teams is different than managing employees in a traditional face-to-face office environment. Although many managers have been learning how to lead their virtual teams over the last several months, we offer five steps for leaders to follow for how to maximize the effectiveness of a remote workplace. By taking specific actions and ensuring the organization has a culture to support their virtual workforce, leaders can improve the performance output and engagement of their teams. The five steps are: first establish and explain the new reality; second, establish and maintain a culture of trust; third, upgrade leadership communication tools and techniques to better inform virtual employees; fourth, encourage shared leadership among team members; and fifth, to create and periodically perform alignment audits to ensure virtual employees are aligned with the organization’s cultural values including its commitment to mission. All these steps start with the realization that managing a team is going to be different when the members are dispersed, and new leadership strategies, communication routines and tools are required.     

Rural women leaders

This research project was designed to study the determinants of leadership development in rural women. The first phase of the study involved individual interviews with women recognized as leaders within a rural community. Each of the 25 rural women leaders interviewed was raised on a farm or in a community with a population smaller than 2,000. The second phase of the study was administered via Survey Monkey to 133 women using a modified version of the Review of Personal Effectiveness with Locus of control (ROPELOC) instrument, which included the key domains of interest and was expanded to include additional questions focusing on unique challenges to leadership among women living in rural communities. The project used leadership‐related community groups as an entry point to identify women across rural Kansas for the survey. The results from these two methods identified six themes: lifelong learners, bias and discrimination, self‐efficacy and overcoming barriers, community influence and social capital, leadership mentors, and expression of leadership.     

Entrepreneurial Leadership in the Context of Company Start‐Up and Growth

Starting a new business is easy. Leading a start‐up and transitioning from founder to CEO is hard. As a result, less than 1 in 25 new companies will grow to have 50 or more employees. This article examines three important challenges faced by entrepreneurial leaders at start‐up: developing a vision, achieving optimal persistence, and executing through chaos. The article also considers three capabilities needed by founders who seek to continue to lead their companies during the growth stage of the entrepreneurial process: strategic thinking, coaching, and self‐evaluation. The Siegfried Group, LLP, a leading national CPA firm that provides Leadership Advisory and Talent Delivery services to Fortune 1000 organizations, is used as a brief case study to illustrate key challenges and capabilities associated with entrepreneurial leadership.