Gender and leadership: men and women's stories

Summary form only given. Looks at gender and leadership using conceptual frameworks from the psychology of women, workplace role and concepts of leadership. There are two modes of thinking-connection and separation-that can be identified and reliably coded in individual's stories of an authority figure. The link between gender, authority figure and leadership is explored through the connected-vs.-separate lens. Men and women are telling stories about a different kind of boss, a new model of authority, and an evolving theory of leadership that is not gender-specific. 52 subjects responded to two instruments: a picture stimulus and a leadership inventory (the Lipman-Blumen-Leavitt Achieving Styles Inventory). Both instruments were utilized to form a story about the boss. Respondents generated stories to a picture with either a male or a female as an authority stimulus. Stories were coded for three imagery areas: connection, separation and hostility. Data was analyzed according to a modified version of the coding scheme developed by Lyons (1983). There were four major findings. (1) Gender was an influence in how leadership is defined. (2) Connected leading was central in the evolving leadership picture of the boss. (3) Separate leading was a male image, mainly applied to the male boss. (4) More hostile boss stories were written by men than by women. The research suggests that gender influences the construction of authority through connected and separate images. Leadership seen in this perspective is a struggle to include connection, along with separation, as an integral and neglected aspect of the ways subordinates understand authority.