The Value of Exploring the Intersection of Leadership, Communication, and Self-Efficacy

• In Event: Inclusive Leadership Education: Considering Gender in What We Teach and Practice

Short Description

The purpose of this presentation is to establish the state of the literature on female leadership, communication, and leadership self-efficacy in order to explore experiences of leadership communication and how it operates when confronting challenges such as gender role stereotype and power dynamics.

Detailed Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to establish the state of the literature on female leadership, communication, and leadership self-efficacy in order to explore experiences of leadership communication and how it operates when confronting challenges such as gender role stereotype and power dynamics. The literature review will be formed through discussing three literature groupings: gender and leadership, gender and communication, and the leadership and self-efficacy. This collective section aims to build an understanding of the literature within each of these areas in order to build towards the final subsection, which attempts to bridge the areas of gender, leadership self-efficacy, and communication. The final subsection attempts to determine if there is value in this intersection.

Gender and Leadership
This first subsection approaches the gender and leadership, forming a basis of what is underpinning communication. The gender has been prevalent in leadership literature since women started becoming a larger presence in the labor market. This area of scholarship is critical to continue because, as new generations of women are coming into the workforce, it is important to understand the experience of women in the workplace, their ability to aspire for and attain leadership positions, and their experience as leaders. Having an understanding within these areas.

Women have brought in a tremendous value into leadership scholarship and practice, and the starting point of that value is understanding what is considered to be a female approach to leadership. Women are noted to be more collective, democratic and participatory leadership manner (Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Trinidad & Normore, 2005; van Engen & Willemsen, 2004). Collective leadership is associated with low rules, a low division of labor, and evident egalitarianism (Rothschild-Whitt, 1979), and as part of their collaborative approach, women leaders have been reported to be more in-tune with their employees' abilities and needs (Rohmann & Rowold, 2009).

It is important to note that feminine interactional approaches are not exclusively held and seen in women and likewise masculine styles in only men. However, it is worth noting both a leader’s biological sex and the associated gender of their leadership and interactional approaches, as congruence or incongruence can play an important role in how they are perceived as a leader and how effective they are seen to be within that role.

The above gender stereotype dichotomies presented by Holmes (2006) impact an individual’s perception of leadership. Role congruity theory states that an individual’s biological sex sets external expectations for how the individual is expected to act or which personality traits they are expected to embody. When bringing this back to looking a female leadership, an incongruity between what is perceived to be good leadership and the expected female characteristics are occasionally positioned as mutually exclusive opposites, such as friendly versus competent and communal versus agentic, which represent feminine associated characteristics and perceived strong leadership respectively (Eagly, 1987; Eagly et al., 2000).

Appelbaum et al. (2013) suggest that the most effective approach for female leaders is a transformational leadership style, which tends align with behaviors that are more common in women than in men (Eagly et al., 2003). In fact, women embodying transformational leader behaviors are typically evaluated positively (Eagly et al., 1992).

Gender stereotyping. Women often feel pressure to align with their expected gender role or to, alternatively, adopt a non-traditional gender role within their leadership. Perceptions of being “‘too masculine” vs. “too feminine” can significantly impact someone’s career and their sense of leadership self-efficacy; this will be addressed in a later subsection. When looking at how women react to gender stereotyping, Eagly and Karau (2002) have noted that women feel pressure to either (1) assimilate to expected stereotyped role or (2) resist role and display counter-stereotype behaviors.

Aligning with the female stereotype. As noted by Eagly and Karau (2002), when confronting pressures of a gender stereotyping, many women will show behaviors that align with a more feminine leadership approach. In favor of this choice, some studies assert that female leaders behaving in a more masculinized manner as being rated less favorably within their evaluations of their leadership (Eagly et al., 1992). Women within male-dominant industries are subjected to stronger gender stereotyping, which means women emulating “masculine” behaviors would not align with employee, peer, and boss expectations (Eagly & Carli, 2003). Furthermore, women generally showed a preference for both male and female leaders to be sensitive leaders over strong leaders or leaders showing more male-associated leadership attributes (Johnson et al., 2008). This indicates that women may lead in accordance to how they would prefer to be lead themselves.

Rejecting the female stereotype. There are many reasons why women will choose to intentionally reject a female leadership stereotype. Women who adopt masculinized behaviors within task-oriented teams are positively evaluated compared to their female counterparts embodying a more feminine approach (Cahn & Siegfried, 1990). In addition, bosses tend to prefer communication styles that align with their own, and in a study conducted by Grant and Taylor (2014) female leaders were seen to have less feminine communication styles, particularly under male bosses. Particularly because women leaders have been found to have less favorable evaluations when operating within a typically male or masculinized role or when having male evaluators (Ayman et al., 2009), women may attempt to exhibit the type of leadership behaviors they think their boss, employees, organization, or industry might prefer. On other occasions, women may choose to adopt a more masculinized approach to their leadership because of their own personal preferences or personalities or, alternatively, as a reaction or out of spite for being pressured to lead in a more feminized way.

Overall, looking at leadership and gender stereotypes is a helpful lens to understand the environment female leaders may be experiencing. Likewise, gender stereotyping is also relevant for females’ communication approaches. The next subsection will build upon the literature presented on the area of gender and leadership to extend on how female communication is perceived.

Recommendations for Practice

Participant

• Stephanie E. Raible, University of Minnesota Duluth