The popular notion that men make better team leaders and are hard taskmasters, while women in leadership positions use 'soft influence tactics' to get work done, is not always true.
The popular notion that men make better team leaders and are hard taskmasters, while women in leadership positions use 'soft influence tactics' to get work done, is not always true. On the contrary, leadership styles are not determined by gender but by the identity of the leader and the needs of the situation. This is the finding of two researchers of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA).
A working paper, titled 'The Impact of Feminine Identity and Soft Influence Tactics on Leadership Style' by Prof Asha Kaul and Jithesh Kumar of IIMA further suggests that women or men with a 'feminine identity' are not soft as is commonly understood. They just happen to exhibit personality traits that encourage greater participation by team members as opposed to the task-oriented personality of hard taskmasters.
The paper says that the soft, subtle and informal style of management practiced by team leaders - they can be of either sex - with a 'feminine identity', is more likely to be found in offices in India than in Western countries where hard taskmasters dominate.
The researchers have arrived at their conclusions about the leadership styles of men and women in the organisational context after a study of data from four sectors: hospitality, namely, IT, FMCG and nationalised banks. They studied 379 male and female leaders from around 40 companies to analyse the relationship between feminine sex identity, soft influence tactics (rationality, personalised help and ingratiation) and leadership styles (participative or task-oriented).
Stating their findings, their paper says that even male leaders can adopt a 'feminine identity' approach, i.e., a soft way of dealing with team members while female leaders are capable of employing a 'masculine identity' (read: harsh taskmaster) approach.
The paper further states that earlier too researches had documented the difference in the working and leadership styles of men and women and the tactics used to secure compliance from team members.
Yet there are few studies which have gone beyond an understanding of leadership styles that is based on the 'psychological' behaviour of men and women stemming from their sexual identity, the researchers say.
They conclude that their study of the 379 subjects taken from four different sectors made it clear that, "leadership styles are not gender specific but defined by the identity of the leader and the situational requirements."
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