Gender And Leadership. Who Has The Better Leadership Style Men or Women?

Every leader has a different style and a different approach to the job, but what about gender and leadership, do men and women have different leadership styles?

Well the very fact that we have gotten to a place in our society where we are able to discuss leadership styles between men and women speaks to how far we've come in matters of gender and leadership.

For a time most of these discussions centered around whether or not women were even capable of being effective leaders. But of course things have changed, it's not perfect...but it's much improved.

According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, women comprise about half of all managers and professionals in the United States.

Since the mid-1980s, the percentage of women in management, professional and related occupations has more than doubled. We need not tell you about the great number of women who are leading companies around the world today.

Women like Indra Nooyi the CEO of Pepsi/Cola, Meg Whitman CEO of Ebay and of course Oprah.

So again we ask do men and women have different leadership styles?

It would appear that women in leadership roles tend to be more empowering and like to use the 'group-think' mentality tocreate solutions. Men are often seem to have a more controlling and commanding style.

We've all seen the movies where the woman in charge has been portrayed as bossy as well as another B word that we won't say!So perhaps because of those depictions female leaders are considered to be more 'transformational' leaders than men.

That means that they act as role models and encourage employees to develop skills which in turn helps to improve productivity. Yes this style may be effective in organizations that are not hierarchical.

But that style may not work so well is a setting that is traditionally male like the military or organized sports. On the flip side the some what autocratic nature of many men probably wouldn't work in a social service job or a retail outlet.

On the topic of gender and leadership some researchers found that men are more autocratic and that they tend totell employees exactly how a job should be done.

Women were found to be more democratic and inter-personally oriented. Employees who have female leaders are more likely to get rewarded after good performance than when they had a male leader.

Men apparently tend to criticize employees and manage in a less hands on manner.

OK before you get all heated over who is the better leader, understand that these are just the observations of a few studies.

There are always exceptions to the rule. Every individual leader, regardless of whether they are a man or a woman, havetheir own preferred style of leadership.

The important thing to take home about gender and leadership is that the inclusion of both women and men in top levelpositions is key.

Diversity and varying approaches to leadership play a big role in the growth and sustainability of any organization or business. Men and women have important leadership characteristics and attributes to bring to the table.

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