Two experimental studies examined whether gender stereotypes about the transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles constitute an advantage or an impediment for women's access to leadership positions in organizations. The first study investigated the accuracy of descriptive gender stereotypes about leadership styles, showing that participants accurately believe that women display more transformational and contingent reward behaviors, and fewer management-by-exception and laissez-faire behaviors than men. The second study investigated prescriptive stereotypes about the importance of leadership styles for the promotion of women and men to different levels in organizations. Inspirational motivation was perceived as more important for men than women and especially important for promotion to CEO. In contrast, individualized consideration was perceived as more important for women than men and especially important for promotion to senior management. Consistent with these stereotypical beliefs about leadership, women interested in promotion may be well advised to blend individualized consideration and inspirational motivation behaviors.
From Study 1, we can conclude that descriptive gender stereotypes about leadership styles are accurate. Participants with considerable management experience thus believe that women display more transformational and contingent reward behaviors, and fewer management-by-exception and laissez-faire behaviors than men. Study 2 investigated prescriptive stereotypes about the importance of leadership styles for the promotion of women and men to different levels in organizations. Inspirational motivation was perceived as more important for men than women and especially important for promotion to CEO. In contrast, individualized consideration was perceived as more important for women than men and especially important for promotion to senior management.
Our approach has several limitations. Experimental studies that simulate employment contexts, while allowing us to test our hypotheses in a controlled manner, raise questions about generalizability to real organizations. Therefore, further research should extend the study of these issues to promotion decisions in organizations. In addition, future experiments could simulate naturalistic, complex decision-making processes in a Brunswik lens framework (e.g., Koch, 2004) that might include a wide range of contextual factors.
Another limitation of our assessment of perceived leadership behavior is that some subscale reliability coefficients were low, and the fit of the nine-factor model of the MLQ was moderate, even if it was equivalent in the two countries. Although this outcome is perhaps not surprising, given that each subscale had only four items, greater scale reliability likely would produce stronger findings. In our research, however, we were obligated to use the intact MLQ to match our findings to the accuracy criterion in Study 1 as well as the Eagly et al. (2003) meta-analysis.
In conclusion, leadership style is thought to be important for promotion, especially inspirational motivation. Thus, it seems advisable that both women and men seeking advancement should display these inspirational motivation behaviors, and do “the vision thing” (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2009). Yet, our findings suggest that female leaders are wise to supplement these behaviors with individualized consideration behaviors to fulfill prescriptive gender norms and avoid backlash (Heilman & Okimoto, 2007). Indeed, for female leaders to be perceived as effective they need to demonstrate both sensitivity and strength, whereas male leaders only need to demonstrate strength (Johnson, Murphy, Zewdie, & Reichard, 2008). Women are expected to blend individualized consideration and inspirational motivation–communal and agentic aspects of leadership–to navigate a route to promotion (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Men, not burdened by a mismatch between the leader role and the male gender role, are advised to place primary emphasis on inspirational motivation. This double burden on women of manifesting inspirational motivation behavior while delivering communal behavior can be a challenge, to be sure. Future research can further clarify the balance between important aspects of leadership style that best enables women to negotiate their way to the highest levels of leadership.
