Women as Leaders

The late, great Susan B. Anthony said "The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race." This being said, when it comes to leadership, does gender matter? Are women better leaders than men?

Belinda Honaker with PICK instructors during a recital

Ten short years ago, a woman named Belinda started a simple organization to help children in her community. Her passion was to help make a difference in the lives of children and to do so in as many as possible while she was alive and able to do so. While this was heavy on her heart, she found that other people in her community didn't feel as strongly about the matter as she did, which caused obstacles along her way. As a woman, she felt weak and powerless when approaching government and county officials for help with funding. She was determined to reach her goals and in order to do so, she did not give up but instead did whatever it took to make her dreams a reality. 

Now, Belinda is a member of the school board in our county and has managed to build and operate a community center, provide assisted living homes, start an official BINGO club,  develop after school programs for the children, along with many others such as  the development of a one of a kind after school music program called PICK, which stands for "Playing Instruments Changes Kids". She is now one of the most important members of our community and I am very proud to call her my mother.

This goes to show that Susan B. Anthony was correct when making her assumption years ago. Today, you will find that there are more women leaders in the world now than ever before. You might ask the question if there is a difference between the way women lead compared to the way men lead. A recent study showed that men and women were equally effective overall in their leadership skills, but women and men were more effective in leadership roles that were seen to be congruent with their gender.

Team Leadership

Leadership can be achieved effectively through teams and in fact it may be the most important element in whether teams succeed or fail according to some researchers. Hill's model for team leadership is shown below. The first box, labeled leadership decisions, suggests that the decisions you make as a leader directly affects team effectiveness through internal and external actions that some leaders may take or decide not to take. This may be broken down even further into task, relational, and environmental factors that may be taken into effect if considering internal or external actions.

As described in Hill's model, leadership decisions and actions result in team effectiveness. Teams can be successful through leaders who are committed to people and are willing to serve and give support to members of the team. Team leaders should continually push for improvement and must know when it is appropriate to change the coach or team members.

As a leader of a volleyball team, I have to be able to lead my team to victory and know what appropriate coaching tactics are necessary and when to enforce them. For example, our team recently traveled to play in a tournament where the prize of winning was a scholarship. This was very important to my team and we knew we would have to work hard as a team in order to achieve our goal. Throughout the entire game, as a leader, I knew when my team needed pushed or when they needed encouragement where as, if I had of just yelled at my team the whole game, we may not have been as successful. By following Hill's model for team leadership,when our team was down by 4 at the end of the game, I took action by making the decision to take my best player out of the game who was having an off night. This task based decision ensured that I was focused on the goal and did what I had to do in order to achieve it. Because of the decisions I made as the leader of my team, we were able to achieve our goal and we walked away with the desired scholarship.

Leadership Styles

There are various styles to leadership. Some of these styles include the situational approach, the contingency theory, the path goal theory, and leader-member exchange theory or LMX. The situational approach to leadership tells leaders what to do in different situations and what not to do in others. This means leaders are able to adapt their styles to different situations.

The contingency theory of leadership says the closer the match between leader style and a particular situation, the more effective the leader will be. This theory follows the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale, as shown to the right. If a leader scores high on the LPC, it means the leader is relationship oriented, whereas being low on the LPC means that the leader is task oriented according to Rowe & Guerrero. The path-goal theory of leadership is a little different from the previous two because it is more about what leaders need to get the job done. This theory defines the goal, clarifies the path, removes obstacles, and provides support. The LMX theory is concerned with the differential nature of the relationships between leaders and each of their followers.

The situational approach to leadership is better learned through experience. The more experience you have reacting to a certain situation, the easier the decision will become. Recently, I was able to demonstrate this approach through my job as a pharmacy technician. Customer service is one of the main priorities of retail pharmacy and as a lead technician I have to adapt my style of leadership everyday based on the situation of the individual customers needs. Now, through experience, I am more able to make the best or correct decision based on the situation.

As previously stated, there are many different styles and approaches to leadership. The situational approach, described above, is only one of these. Each theory is based on different concepts and entails different ways to achieve leadership.

Are we born with leadership skills?

Many people would argue that leaders are born with traits that make them become great leaders and one can't obtain skills to be a leader. Traits are attributes that include aspects such as values, needs, motives, and personality (Yukl, 2006). I would agree with those who believe great leaders are not born, but can be made. Let's look at a general definition of leadership: Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. When viewing leadership as a process, this means that leaders affect and are affected by their followers either positively or negatively. Also, leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership knowledge and skills.  However, we know that we have traits that can influence our actions.

With this being said, I believe that everyone is born with traits but not everyone is willing to use these traits to become great leaders. If you want to be a leader, you will use these traits for the good and continue to possess more knowledge and skills to enhance your traits to ultimately become a great leader. The chart below shows the Process and Trait type of leadership.

References:
Guerrero & Rowe. Cases in Leadership, 2nd Ed.
Concepts of Leadership. 2010. May be accessed at: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

Leadership Vs. Management

At first, one might agree that leadership and management go hand in hand and have about the same meaning when actually, they are similar, but have different meanings. A good differentiation is that leadership has followers and managers have subordinates. Management is concerned with organization and planning that is based on immediate results, whereas, leadership is based on guiding a follower to a specific goal. Many philosophers also define leadership as a process. The fact is, no matter how you chose to define the two, after you distinguish the difference between them you will become a better leader and manager.

I witnessed a true example of leadership when I volunteered for a non profit organization in my home town. The organizations goal was to develop a community center for their very small town. The "leader" of the group was self-confident, sociable, and very determined to see her organization prevail. She wasn't getting a lot of support from the community because her goal seemed too far fetched. She was determined to succeed and was sure if she could put in the hard work, her organization would sail. After a year of very hard work and let downs, she was finally able to reach her goal.

This is an example of leadership and management. The organization had a manager who had to organize and make plans based on immediate events, however, their drive and determination inspired others or "followers" to reach out to the children and develop similar organizations. So, can you be a leader and a manager? Yes! The skills to be a leader or a manager are not exclusive.