By Ray Williams
March 24, 2021
Certain crises require certain female leaders. Researchers at Lehigh University and Queen’s University Belfast have found that trust established by female leaders practicing strong interpersonal skills results in better crisis resolution in cases when outcomes are predictable.
They describe this “female leadership trust advantage” in a paper published in Psychology of Women Quarterly. Their research is the first to examine why and when a female leadership trust advantage emerges for leaders during organizational crises.
“People trust female leaders more than male leaders in times of crisis, but only under specific conditions,” said paper co-author Corinne Post, professor of management at Lehigh University. “We showed that when a crisis hits an organization, people trust leaders who behave in relational ways, and especially so when the leaders are women and when there is a predictable path out of the crisis.”
Relational behaviors are shown by those who think of themselves in relation to others. Such skills help build and restore trust, and, on average, are adopted more by women than men. The researchers specifically looked at the relational behavior of interpersonal emotion management (IEM), which alleviates feelings of threat during a crisis by anticipating and managing the emotions of others. IEM behaviors include removing or altering a problem to reduce emotional impact; directing attention to something more pleasant; reappraising a situation as more positive; and modulating or suppressing one’s emotional response. IEM is central to establishing or repairing trust, often eroded when a crisis occurs.
Researchers defined crisis as a common, though often unexpected, time-sensitive, high-impact event that may disrupt organizational functioning and pose relational threats. For a company, this could be a product safety concern, consumer data breach, oil spill, corruption allegation or widespread harassment, or now the virus pandemic.
“Crises are fraught with relational issues, which, unless handled properly, threaten not only organizational performance but also the allocation of organizational resources and even organizational survival,” they said. “Organizational crises, therefore, require a great deal of relational and emotional work to build or restore trust among those affected and may influence such trusting behaviors as provision of resources to the organization,” including economic resources and investment in the firm, as well as inspiring employee cooperation.
To examine differences in trust for men and women leaders during an organizational crisis, researchers created a set of crisis scenarios. In some scenarios, the CEO (at times a male and at other times a female) anticipated and managed the emotions of others as the crisis unfolded — and in others the CEO did not attend to others’ emotions at all. Scenarios were varied to depict crises with predictable or uncertain outcomes.
“We found that this female leadership trust advantage was not just attitudinal, but that — when the consequences of the crisis were foreseeable — people were actually ready to invest much more in the firms led by relational women,” Post said. “Our finding also suggests that, in an organizational crisis, female (relative to male) leaders may generate more goodwill and resources for their organization by using relational behaviors when the crisis fallout is predictable, but may not benefit from the same advantage in crises with uncertain consequences.”
Demonstrating superior relational skills may help female leaders gain a trust advantage in crises that focus primarily on relationship aspects in an organization, when there is certainty around the resolution and fallout from the crisis is more controllable, for example. But it may not be as valuable when crisis outcomes are uncertain or difficult to control, when both agentic leadership (making decisions and acting quickly) and relational leadership (such as maintaining high levels of communication) are required.
Authors on the paper, “A Female Leadership Trust Advantage in Times of Crisis: Under What Conditions?” include Post; Iona Latu, lecturer in experimental social psychology at Queen’s University Belfast; and Liuba Belkin, associate professor of management at Lehigh University.
The study is unique in basing its scenarios on production and food safety crises, when most studies of female leaders and organizational crisis look at financial performance crises. It also is different from most other research that “simply assumes female leaders behave more relationally,” Post said. “We were able to determine how leader gender and leader relational behaviors (interpersonal emotional management) influenced trust both independently from each other and in combination.”
The findings have important implications for leadership and gender research, as well as business professionals. “Identifying what crisis management behaviors enhance trust in female leaders, and under what conditions such trust is enhanced may, for example, help to mitigate the documented higher risk for women (compared to men) of being replaced during drawn-out crises,” the researchers said.
The results also suggest that to realize their leadership advantage potential, women may need to embrace relational leadership behaviors, at least under some circumstances. “Female leaders may find it helpful to know that, when uncertainty around a crisis is low, using relational leadership behaviors may help them elicit more trust from others,” they said.
The research also holds implications for human resource professionals and organizational leaders. “Because our findings reveal the importance of relational skills in eliciting trust during a crisis, we would encourage firms to consider hiring for, training and rewarding relational skills in their leaders, especially in jobs with high potential for crises,” Post said.
Other Relevant Research Showing the Strength of Women Leaders
Kellie A. McElhaney and Sanaz Mobasseri of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkley, produced a report, “Women Create a Sustainable Future.”Among the conclusions in their research and published in the report, was “companies that explicitly place value on gender diversity perform better in general, and perform better than their peers on the multiple dimensions of corporate sustainability.”
A 2012 Dow Jones study shows that business startups are more likely to succeed if they have women on their executive team. And according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, although women own about 40% of the private businesses in the U.S., women make up less than 10% of venture-backed start-ups.
A 2005 Report on Women and Entrepreneurship, the percentage of entrepreneurs who expect growth for the businesses is higher for female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs. And according to a separate study by Babson College and the London School of Economics, women led start-ups experienced fewer failures in moving from early to growth–stage companies than men.
Catalyst, the U.S. non-profit company, found that in 2011 a 26% difference in return on invested capital (ROIC) between the top-quartile companies with 19-44% women board representation and the bottom quartile companies with zero women directors. When the McKinsey team asked business executives globally what they believe the most important leadership attributes are for success today, each of the top four—intellectual stimulation, inspiration, participatory decision-making and setting expectations/rewards—were more commonly found among women leaders. McKinsey reported in its Organizational Health Index(OHI) companies with three or more women in top positions scored higher than their peers.
A Pew Center Global Attitudes Project found that 75% of respondents in the U.S. and 80% in Canada believe that women make equally good political leaders, and the numbers were much higher and Europe, Asia and parts of South America. Another Pew Center study, Social and Demographic Survey found women leaders possessed more leadership traits of honesty, intelligence, compassion and creativity than men, whereas men scored higher only in decisiveness.
Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, authors of The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Activate, writing in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, argue that in today’s complex demanding world of organizations, women may possess superior leadership capabilities compared to men.
Zenger and Folkman make that contention based on 30 years of research on what constitutes overall leadership effectiveness that comes from 360 evaluations of a leader’s peers, bosses and direct reports and a 2011 survey of over 7,000 leaders from some of the most successful and progressive organizations. They concluded “at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts—and the higher the level, the wider the gap grows.” Specifically, the authors note, “at all levels, women were rated higher in fully 12 or the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership. And two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree—taking initiative and driving for results—have long been thought of as particularly male strengths.” Men outscored women significantly on only one management competency—the ability to develop a strategic perspective.In fact, at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows.
Research by Zenger and Folkman from 2011 (updated in 2019) clearly shows that women are more effective on most of the top competencies of good leadership – including taking initiative, inspiring and motivating others, and building relationships.
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