A Message From The Dean

Excellence in Women’s Leadership: The Importance of Vision

Harvard Business Reviews’ January 2009 issue on “Transforming Leaders” summarized a recent study comparing the leadership skills of men and women executives.[i] The study shows that women are perceived to outperform men in most dimensions of leadership except for one – vision.

 INSEAD conducted a global study of 2,816 executives’ 360o  assessments of their leadership skills in which 22,244 subordinates, peers, and supervisors evaluated the executives’ leadership skills.  Twenty percent of the executives and 27% of the observers were women.   Similar to earlier studies,[ii] they found that female leaders were rated higher than male leaders in 7 out of 10 dimensions of leadership from both male and female leaders.  These findings demonstrate, once again, that women are perceived to be successful in leadership roles. 

However, the study revealed one critical area where women were not rated as highly as men -- vision.  Male peers, in particular, gave women significantly lower scores in vision than they gave men.  This perceived deficiency for women leaders is important. First, the research shows that envisioning is perceived by observers as critical to effective leadership and carries more weight than other dimensions when evaluating overall leadership effectiveness.  And, second, envisioning is what enables a leader to identify opportunities and obstacles, set strategic direction, and mobilize people to achieve exceptional results.  

The researchers conclude that in order to continue to build the ranks of women in leadership, women need to give higher priority to developing their vision and strategy and communicating it more broadly across the organization, particularly to peers and supervisors.

This is an important “wake up call” for all of us in leadership roles.

Best regards,

Deborah

To further develop your leadership skills, attend one of our 2009 Executive Education programs or the Leadership Conference on May 2.

[i]   H. Ibarra and O. Obodaru, “Women and the Vision Thing,” Harvard Business Review, January, 2009, pp62

[ii]  D. Merrill-Sands and D. Kolb, 2001, “Women as Leaders: The Paradox of Success,”  CGO Insight, No 9.