Accompanying our interest in leadership and widespread reports of the difficulty that women are having breaking the glass ceiling in many of today’s organizations, questions have emerged regarding gender and leadership style. Describe the Eagly and Johnson (1990) findings as they pertain to sex differences in leadership style.

Gender and Leadership

Introduction

The leadership style difference in management between men and women has been assessed and analyzed since the 1950s. The difference has found to be overlapping and in many cases mall which shows that there is no major difference that causes the gender inequality to be directed in leadership styles. The women are tend to be more collaborative, cooperative, and sympathetic and help motivate employees through multiple channels. This shows that women have all the positive traits required to be a motivating, collaborating and empowering leader in the organization. However, the research in female leadership studies have also identified that females leaders are less hierarchical and may have effective control and management practice in the organization where there are less boundaries and blurred ranks in the hierarchy.

In order to verify the difference between the men and women leadership styles, the Met analysis is conducted to address the issues considered in the leadership studies. The current essay explores the leadership meta-analysis covering the patterns of female leadership style.

Findings of the meta analysis

The findings of the Meta analysis indicate that the research work that claims there is no difference between the leadership style of female and males is not accurate and nor is the justification that the female and male leaders have distinctive stereotyping leadership style fully accurate. The findings of the leadership and their traits between male and female are different given the setting in which they are operating and working as leaders. The research conducted included all the past relevant studies base on the criteria to test the difference between the female and male leadership styles. Based on the analysis there are multiple findings drawn from the Meta analysis that require further analysis and discussion.

The first finding is that the leadership styles tend to differ because of the experimental environment and tend to be more stereotypic. Which means that male and female leaders tend to differ in the experimental environment. The reason to this is because the leaders and participants in the experimental design tend to behave differently because of their relationship with the other participants. They are often strangers to each other. However when the participants who are not selected for the leaders role were tested they showed that they were less stereotypic (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). This shows that the general and the actual perception of the leader in the managerial capacity in the experimental environment cause stereotypic behaviors.

The next findings show the democratic behavior of the female leaders in the organizational environment than male leaders. The reason to these differences is because of the difference of the skill or personality or both. The women have more social skills and their higher position in the organization is also perceived different which creates the difference of the leadership style when it comes to democratic behaviors.

The next point raised in the Meta analysis conducted on leadership style is regarding the effect size measurement. The leadership style is strictly speaking between the two parties, the leadership and the followers and the effect they produce combined causes the changes in the organization. Hence there are no single standards to evaluate the leadership style of the two people in the same organization or with different genders (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). Here another aspect of the controlled environment arises which proposes that such environment factors though cannot be fully control can be somewhat in the laboratory environment that causes the stereotypic behaviors in the two gender leadership styles as discussed above.

The aspect of the leadership and followers also includes the impact that is calculated. The followers who are part of the interaction and relationship are different for every leadership and hence have different effect on the leadership style relationship. The controlling of the followers behaviors and nature of the group can cause the within sex leadership style to be greatly varied based on the followers nature. The followers can be both male and female, only females or males based on the nature of the business in which the research has been conducted and since the meta analysis is built on past research work it is difficult to determine how the changes in the group nature and the difference of the leadership gender can cause the difference of the leadership effectiveness and the measures of styles (Eagly &Johnson, 1990).

Talking about the measure of the style, the difference between the two leadership styles persist based on the measurement in which the leadership style is assesses. The gender difference means that there are different tools to measure the leadership style. The measurement tool also differs based on the followers group. This means that the effect sizes collected in the same magnitude with ore controlled environmental setting are more considerable.

The findings indicate that there is need of further analysis and explanation in both leadership style as well as the measurement tool to be defined that access the leadership style difference and properly explains the nature of the leadership style differences.

Conclusion

The Met analysis conducted on the difference of the leadership style between men and women shows that the leadership style can be best measured if the environment is controlled. And there are no measures to develop the difference and accurately be able to define who are better leader men or women. The leadership style between the men and women is different and that the use of different leadership approaches and the style of the leader him/ herself defines the effectiveness of the leadership style. Hence the leadership style between two sexes is different but needs more explanation.

References

Eagly, A. H., & Johnson, B. T. (1990). Gender and leadership style: A meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 108(2), 233.