KARL MOORE – This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, Talking Management for The Globe and Mail. Today, I am delighted to speak to Raina Brands [assistant professor of organizational behaviour] from the London Business School.
Raina, you have been looking at charismatic leaders. Do men and women differ in respect to charismatic leadership?
RAINA BRANDS – Well, we really take the perspective that men and women don't differ so much in their leadership style but more that they are perceived to differ in leadership styles. So we are really interested in looking at the circumstances under which men versus women are perceived to be charismatic leaders almost regardless of how they are actually acting as leaders.
KARL MOORE – What have you found?
RAINA BRANDS – Well, we found that the informal social interactions that surround men and women as they lead are really important for building their reputations as charismatic leaders.
So we looked particularly at the structure of the advice networks surrounding men and women – so within their team, who goes to whom for advice on work-related matters. What we found was when the team advice network is very dense, so there is lots of interconnections, lots of informal giving and receiving of advice, that is when women are really perceived to be charismatic leaders. On the other side of that, when the team advice network is perceived to be a star network, so there is one star and everybody revolves around that person – that is when men are seen to be charismatic leaders.
KARL MOORE – But what if that star is a woman?
RAINA BRANDS – We actually control for that in our analysis, and it doesn't seem to matter who the star is. What is interesting is that the leader themselves does not have to be the star but what really matters is if there is a star in the network.
This, I guess, primes people to except a more heroic, dominant leader and what we know from gender stereotype research is we expect men to be very dominant, and encapsulate this heroic role so that primes us to expect a man to lead in that situation.
Whereas in the more dense, cohesive networks, this is a more communal cohesive feel and that resonates with what we think about in terms of women. We expect women to be caring, communal, and so we are primed to see a woman leader in those situations.
KARL MOORE – What advice would you give to women? Is it to look for the right context?
RAINA BRANDS – Yes, I think it is looking for the right context and almost trying to build the right context. I wouldn't encourage people to build a star network necessarily, I think that would probably undermine team functioning.
But certainly for women, encouraging these informal relationships and building a sense of community and cohesion, I think that is really important for women leaders.