Women's Leadership Journeys

Stories, Research, and Novel Perspectives

Sherylle J. Tan,Lisa DeFrank-Cole

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351209335
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Betriebswirtschaft
• Categoría: Leadership

This volume brings together research from leading scholars with stories from women leaders in diverse sectors to provide insights from their leadership journeys. The book begins with personal stories of women's leadership journeys by chief executive officers, a former U.S. ambassador, a college president, and others. The stories enable readers to make sense of their own leadership journeys by learning about the varied paths to leadership and taking note of key elements such as role transitions, defining moments, identity development, and growth mindsets. Next, scholars discuss novel research that can guide women in navigating their journeys to leadership, including on followership, competition, representation of women in politics, and the role of biology in leadership. This must-have volume offers cutting-edge perspectives and a guide for women to navigate their own journeys to impactful leadership.

1
Introduction

Sherylle J. Tan and Lisa DeFrank-Cole

Women possess all the qualities required for effective and impactful leadership in the twenty-first century (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Women leaders have shown themselves to be persuasive, strong motivators, problem solvers, and mentors (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Enge, 2003). Yet, the journey to leadership for many women is not a simple, linear road. There are various twists and turns, starts and stops, and assorted roadmaps that women must navigate through toward leadership (Hewlett, 2007; Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005).

In 2007, Alice Eagly and Linda Carli proposed the metaphor of the labyrinth, a negotiable yet challenging set of routes and “circuitous paths” that women must take to attain top leadership positions. Eagly and Carli believed that the presence of women in elite leadership positions called for a new metaphor to replace “the glass ceiling” to appropriately reflect the obstacles and diversions that women face as they navigate their path to leadership. Introduced in 1986 by two journalists from the Wall Street Journal, Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt, the glass ceiling references the transparent layer that allows a woman to see the top job but not the invisible barriers that hinder her advancement to it. While women navigate the rise to leadership, they are inundated with obstacles that they had not seen or anticipated on their way up and hit the ceiling unable to ascend to those senior leadership positions. Those hard-to-see barriers, such as discrimination and prejudice, have been the focus of a substantial body of research dedicated to women and leadership over the past three decades (see Barreto, Ryan, & Schmitt, 2009; Bruckmuller, Ryan, Haslam, & Peters, 2013; Eagly & Carli, 2007).

The glass ceiling is believed to be an outdated metaphor given that women have begun to move into top leadership positions. Women are encouraged to take on larger roles in leadership, as popularized by books including those by Sheryl Sandberg and Deborah Spar, and we now see women as chief executive officers, business owners, and members of Congress. While some women have broken through the glass ceiling, men continue to “outnumber women in nearly every sector of leadership” (DeFrank-Cole & Tan, 2017, p. 43), despite the fact that women make up half of the American population and are earning the majority of degrees at every level of higher education (Johnson, 2016). For example, women hold about 5.2% of S&P 500 chief executive officer positions (Catalyst, 2017), and while a record number of women (104 in 2017) are serving in the House and Senate, women make up little more than 19% of the U.S. Congress (Center for American Women and Politics, 2016). Furthermore, in the political sphere, we saw in 2016 the first woman nominated by a major political party for the office of the U.S. presidency, but she was not elected.

Whether the glass ceiling has been cracked or broken remains up for debate; however we do know that this underrepresentation of women in leadership does not appear to be an issue of qualification or ability to lead. In fact, there are plenty of qualified women to serve in leadership roles. There is a great deal of research to show that women are capable of being effective leaders and exhibit the traits and skills necessary for complex contemporary organizations and society (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003; Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995). A meta-analysis found that women’s leadership styles tend to be more transformational and women tend to engage in more contingent reward behaviors than men, styles that are both associated with effective leadership (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003), and other research has supported the effectiveness of women’s leadership when rated by others in a variety of contexts (Paustian-Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, 2014).

The scarcity of women leaders has been attributed to gender role stereotypes people hold along with discrimination and prejudice women often face in the workplace (Eagly & Carli, 2007). While many improvements have been made, the workplace in many ways remains an artifact of the twentieth century. Gender stereotypes, while more subtle than in the past, continue to be a prominent issue for women due to the cultural and historical views of leadership being a masculine trait (Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell, & Ristikari, 2011). These subtle cultural beliefs that inadvertently favor men, referred to by Ibarra, Ely, and Kolb (2013) as second-generation forms of gender bias, impede women’s journeys to leadership and hinder their leader identity development. Second-generation bias reinforces the status quo by preventing women from being seen as leaders and role models to other women, thus placing them at a disadvantage from being considered for leadership positions (Ibarra, Ely, & Kolb, 2013).

The impact of these biases and stereotypes plays out in a variety of ways and has implications on women’s perception of their own leadership abilities and how they perceive themselves. In a study where women were exposed to leader stereotypes, women performed more poorly and showed lower self-efficacy than those who were not primed with the stereotypes (Hoyt & Blascovich, 2010). Similarly, later research by Simon and Hoyt (2012) found that women who viewed gender-stereotypic commercials preferred a follower role in a leadership task that ensued. The findings also indicated that there was indeed a positive effect on increasing women’s leadership roles after viewing media images of women in counter-stereotypical roles highlighting the importance of women as role models for leadership.

The influence of exposure to women as leaders can shape women’s beliefs about leadership and its attainability. Research by Dasgupta and Asgari (2004) emphasized the importance of women viewing women in leadership positions, specifically finding that the experience of learning about women leaders coupled with seeing women as leaders helped women to adjust and change their gender-stereotypic views of leadership. They found that the exposure to female leaders helped women to interpret their leadership goals as realistic targets for themselves and for other women. One way to enhance women’s leadership, in addition to seeing women in leadership roles, is to understand how other women have broken barriers and navigated their way to leadership. Because women’s career and leadership trajectories are not linear (Wittenberg-Cox & Maitland, 2008), the journeys women take to leadership are often individual and thus important to understand and reflect upon. This volume not only provides research from scholars to support and develop women on their roads to leadership but also includes stories from women leaders.

Storytelling is an important method for learning and gaining insight into the paths of leadership. Storytelling allows us to make meaning of the world in which we live. It allows us to connect to those around us whose experiences resonate with us.

Storytelling is a uniquely human experience that enables us to convey, through the language of words, aspects of ourselves and others, and the worlds, real or imagined, that we inhabit. Stories enable us to come to know these worlds and our place in them given that we are all, to some degree, constituted by stories.

(Alterio & McDrury, 2002, p. 1994)

Regarding leadership, trust is built through communication (Auvinen, Aaltio, & Blomqvist, 2013) and stories have “emerged as a potential approach in terms of coaching and leadership development” (p. 497). Therefore, using stories as a method to demonstrate women’s connections with leadership is a beneficial and legitimate strategy to expose women to female leaders and to support their leadership development. Thus, the chapters in this book provide stories, as well as research essays, to encourage women on their journeys to leadership.

This anthology stems from the long-standing and highly successful Kravis-de-Roulet conference series held in Claremont, CA, and sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College, which highlights cutting-edge research topics in leadership. In 2016, the conference focused on women and leadership and provided insights from women in the field who have made an impact through their leadership journeys. In addition to the speakers from the conference, a richness to this volume is produced by the inclusion of chapters from four past chairs of the Women and Leadership Affinity Group (WLAG) in the International Leadership Association (ILA). The WLAG is the largest interest group in the ILA, with over 1,000 members. These women, combined with renowned scholars and practitioners (including male researchers), provide a compilation of chapters where the authors discuss leadership through the lens of a diverse and well-informed group.

This edited volume explores women’s leadership journeys and the remarkable influence women leaders are having on the world. The intent is to join research from leading scholars with stories from women leaders in diverse sectors to provide readers with a guide to navigate their own journeys to leadership. The collection does this through three sections: Women’s Leadership Journeys: Stories From Women Leaders, Navigating the Leadership Journey, and Looking at Women’s Journeys Ahead: Cutting-Edge Perspectives.

Women’s Leadership Journeys: Stories From Women Leaders

In the first section, the chapter authors tell personal stories of their leadership journeys. The variety of stories is what makes this segment of the book so interesting and compelling. As Nancy Adler (2011) tells us, “(p)erhaps one of the most powerful early influences on future leadership success is embedded in the personal stories and behavior” of others (p. 160). You will learn from those who did not hold formal positions of leadership and from those who did. Several of the positions highlighted are chief executive officers, members of boards, a former U.S. ambassador, professors, a social entrepreneur, and a female college president. Women use their influence in many ways, and it is important to recognize the diversity of these examples, some of which may not be discussed frequently in the leadership literature. Reading women’s stories of leadership will empower others to look at their lives and see examples in their own experiences. Having a broad view of leadership, one not based solely on holding a position of leadership, will demonstrate multiple ways of influencing that were not originally considered when defining the term in masculine ways. “One anomaly is that there are few women in leadership roles, in part the result of our having defined leadership solely in terms of position” (Astin & Leland, 1991, p. 3). This broader view of leadership is especially important to highlight the various ways in which women influence others and should be valued for their roles. The chapter authors in this section share their stories about leadership to enable readers to make sense of their own journeys by connecting to those whose stories resonate with them and to learn about the varied paths to leadership that exist.

To share a less-publicized perspective in chapter 2, DeFrank-Cole and DeFrank discuss the impact of family on one’s leadership journey, specifically in a matrilineal context. Also present are the intersections of leadership with gender, class, ethnicity, and education. This chapter calls attention to women who may not have held formal positions but definitely demonstrated leadership attributes and influence. As Barbara Kellerman (2003) states: “a growing body of evidence demonstrates that although women have not generally held formal positions of authority, this is not tantamount to saying they did not exercise power or exert influence” (p. 54). Thus, this chapter highlights women who embodied this description and how they have influenced others. The authors stress the importance of their stories not for merit or for recognition but for the concept of ordinary, commonplace leadership that takes place outside and inside the context of traditional careers.

As a woman who has served in some of the highest-level leadership positions, successful business executive and diplomat Barbara Barrett shares her insight in chapter 3. Writing from the perspective of a senior leader for the majority of her life, she gives a variety of lessons and supports them with practical examples. Since she has had many diverse experiences, which began with enormous family responsibility at an early age, Barrett provides examples as someone who has “seen it all.” After her father died, she was the sole source of income for six children and her mother in southwestern Pennsylvania. She persevered, pursued an undergraduate and law degree in Arizona, and continues to believe that education is one of the keys to her success. She has served as ambassador to Finland and the CEO of several corporations and professes “life is what we make of it.”

Heather Inez Ricks Scott brings original research to light with her knowledge of women who served as board chairpersons in chapter 4. She examines how resistance and support impact women during the journey to the role of trustee board chair. The findings from this qualitative study offer a firsthand perspective and view of the participants’ leadership journeys. Sitting at just less than 20%, the small number of women who serve as chairperson points to the lack of representation at the highest levels in academe. When women have been earning baccalaureate degrees in higher numbers than men since the 1980s (U.S. Department of Education, 1990), this disproportionate number of women in the boardroom gives reason for concern. The experiences of the women featured in this work offer a variety of perspectives on obtaining executive level roles of leadership in higher education. An analysis of the respective leadership journeys provides insightful themes into the ascension patterns of the leaders.

Carolyn J. Stefanco is the 11th president of the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. Building on the previous chapter about boards of trustees at academic institutions, in chapter 5, we hear from a person who reports directly to the chair of such a board. As someone who wants to encourage more women to become college presidents, Stefanco gives a firsthand account of what it is like to apply for and obtain such a high-profile position. She states that resilience is a critically important skill not only during the application process but also when holding the job. She gives advice about persistence and how skills learned during the application period are also directly relevant to the public personae one will take on when becoming Madame President.

In chapter 6, Connie K. Duckworth, a social entrepreneur, gives us insight from someone who has worked on Wall Street as the first female sales and trading partner at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. After retiring as partner from this high-level career, she turned her sights to philanthropy and to community engagement. She founded ARZU, which means “hope” in Dari, in 2004, and helps Afghan women weavers break the cycle of poverty. In her role as CEO, she is focused on providing a sustainable and profitable model of economic development. Through her leadership lessons, she gives pragmatic advice on how to live life as if it were not a dress rehearsal. From taking risks to seeking feedback and learning how to plan for the near and far terms, Duckworth gives an inspirational message of optimism.

Navigating the Journey

In the first section, we presented stories from women leaders and their journeys to leadership. In the second section, we focus on how women navigate their journeys to leadership. We know that the leadership and career trajectories of women are not linear and that they are heavily influenced by a multitude of factors that impact their decisions and pathways to leadership (Hewlett, 2007; Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005). In navigating their journeys, many women often encounter barriers that have kept them from leadership positions. Much of the earlier research on women and leadership has primarily focused on identifying those barriers. As previously mentioned, discrimination and prejudice are two obstacles that have been largely researched and found to keep women from senior leadership. Understanding the literature on the barriers to leadership has helped inform women and scholars. This literature has allowed scholars and practitioners to develop women’s leadership in ways that address the challenges and hurdles they face during their leadership journeys. In Part II, rather than taking us back to barriers for women in leadership, scholars discuss research that can guide women in their own journeys to impactful leadership. By looking at the role of relationships and motivation to lead in career transitions into entrepreneurship; exploring how diverse, midlevel women progress to achieve their leadership aspirations; finding the courage to push through comfort zones and make bold moves; identifying defining moments in self-perceptions of leadership; understanding leadership identity and building a team for mentorship and support; and buffering against leadership identity threat through efficacy and mindsets, women can use this research to navigate their leadership journeys in ways that best fit their needs.

First, Tan and Raigoza identify the complex reasons why women make career transitions and become entrepreneurs. Focusing on women’s relationships and their motivations to lead, there is a tendency for them to leave corporate jobs and start their own businesses. Chapter 7 investigates the impulse of women to find work-life balance, while also maintaining their needs for a challenging career. With work-family conflict playing a larger role in the life of work...

Índice

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Women’s Leadership Journeys: Stories From Women Leaders
• Part II Navigating the Journey
• Part III Looking at Women’s Leadership Journeys Ahead: Cutting-Edge Perspectives
• Index