Gender differences in leadership style: Predictors of level of agreement between leader self -ratings and supervisory ratings, peer ratings, and ratings by direct reports.

Abstract

Avid scholarly debate continues around the unresolved issue of male and female leadership styles. Previous studies have yielded conflicting results, rendering the literature on this topic chaotic. Many studies have relied on leader-only self-report data to draw conclusions about leadership style, however leadership scholars describe these as unreliable at best. This dissertation examines how accurately male and female leaders perceive their own leadership skill, based on more than 5,000 leader self-reports, triangulated with ratings from superiors, peers and direct reports. There are more than 62,000 individual cases in the dataset, collected from individuals in field settings in more than 1200 organizations. The issue of ratings agreement is important because theoretical models have postulated that over-estimation, under-estimation and in-agreement can have an impact on organizational functioning. Accurate self-perception has also been linked to leader effectiveness in the literature. The theoretical framework for this analysis is the Competing Values Framework (Cameron & Quinn, 1999) comprising 12 scales of leadership skill. Linear Mixed Models (LMMs) as well as Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models were used to identify predictors of agreement between leader self-ratings and other-ratings. The study revealed that there were no significant differences between the self-ratings of male and female leaders on 7 of the 12 scales of leadership ability, however self-other ratings generally disagree. Differing patterns of disagreement emerged by leader gender, observer gender, and more importantly, gender pairings (M/M, M/F, F/F, F/M). Male leaders tended to over-estimate their skills, whereas female leaders have a more balanced profile between over-estimation, under-estimation, and in-agreement ratings. Male observers tended to be harsher in their ratings of leaders than females. The most contentious gender pairing was the male/male pair, and the most agreeable, the female/female pair. In the regression analyses, female observer gender, rather than female leader gender, was a significant predictor of ratings agreement at the subordinate and superior levels. Significant interaction effects between peer gender and peer age were found. The study concludes that gender differences in leadership style can be attributed to complex interactions between leader and observer rank, gender, and age, rather than to sole considerations of leader gender.