Q: Does gender still play a significant role in promotion decisions? Is it easier for a mediocre male to land a prize leadership role?
A: This is a very live topic. Maria Rachelle addressed it in her Harvard Business Review article entitled, “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?” (blogs.hbr.org, August 26, 2013 ). Rachelle’s article has raised provocative comments in response to her conclusion that “[t] he real gender issue isn’t a lack of qualified women, but a surplus of unqualified men.”
Whether you agree with Rachelle’s conclusion or not, it is clear we still live in a gender normative business world that rewards male leaders more frequently and more visibly than it does female leaders. Whether this is due to the prevalence of “unqualified men” is open to debate. Many reasons have been cited for gender leadership discrepancies in the workplace from the role “soft skills” play in leadership to the contrast between “male” and “female” values. Issues of access, personal power, presentation and favoritism also come into the discussion. At the core of the discussion, though, are a few fundamental questions:
- Is the whole notion of powerful “leadership” still synonymous in practice with “male leadership”? Is “female leadership” synonymous with weakness?
- Do we still harbor a visceral notion of leadership that tends to favor males/disfavor females?
- Are we more willing, as a culture, to tolerate mediocre male leaders?
- Do we notice female faults, failings and challenges more readily than we notice those of their male peers?
- Do organizations, perhaps by default, groom male middle managers more intentionally for leadership overlooking real female talent in the process?
The article has generated much heated commentary and analysis of everything from soft skills to “command-control” leadership styles. If I had to stake a claim to a position, it would be that the key issue is perception – not competence. I do believe “perception” has strong gender biases that then substantiate the belief in male competence even when the evidence suggests otherwise. My experience has been that it takes much more “incompetence” for a male leader to be judged as such than it does a female leader.
Another way to look at the topic is to see who gets the proverbial “benefit of the doubt.” Many of us are more willing to give a male in a position of authority the “benefit of the doubt” than a female in a parallel role with similar skills. Generally, we do tend to be more critical and less forgiving of women, and this, perhaps even more than women’s “predisposition” to certain skills, traits and operating styles, may account for our perception of their leadership.
Interestingly, I have encountered a similar phenomenon when doing reference checks on powerful women leaders. It is often the case that their peers and supervisors communicate their behavior as intolerable, inexcusable or overly aggressive. At least, this is what they report in a reference process. I suspect the references would not be as critical of a male exhibiting similar traits. Being an Alpha male is okay; being an Alpha female is not.
The tenet of the Rachelle article seems to be that being a mediocre male is generally okay, whereas being a mediocre female is not. My take on all of this is that we have learned to be more critical and to have higher expectations of women in the workforce. This plays itself out in a number of measurable ways including, perhaps, our tolerance for less successful male leaders. If that is the case, and it may well be, the solution is not to start decrying men or waging war on them in the workplace. Rather, the solution might be to take a more generous approach to women who aspire to leadership.
Contact Karen Alphonse at Karena@execSearches.com or visit ExecSearches.com for more information about our career coaching services.
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