Leadership Research Summary:
- The purpose of this perspective study was to present the argument that authentic leadership is a gendered representation of leadership. Researchers first provide a brief history of leadership theories and definitions of authentic leadership. The study then critique authentic leadership and offer arguments to support the premise that authentic leadership is not gender-neutral and is especially challenging for women.
- Authentic leadership is a contemporary leadership perspective which places emphasis on the leader’s understanding of his true self and his actions that align with his true self. The current literature on authentic leadership describes leaders in heroic terms, which reinforces the stereotypical individualistic agency of leadership as opposed to recognizing or rewarding the relational aspects of leadership. This viewpoint of authentic leadership also neglects to address how authentic leadership applies to women and the particular concerns facing women leaders who want to enact authentic leadership.
- Researchers presented three primary issues which result in authentic leadership being particularly challenging for women. First, there is a double-bind dilemma which forces women to make a choice between acting in concert with gender-normative behaviors or with expected leadership role behaviors. Second, organizations are gendered entities which require women to fit into male-dominated environments. Third, the weight given to the individual, true authentic self as opposed to the self in relation to others continues to position women as leadership outsiders due to the focus on the traditionally masculine, individual agentic aspects of leadership.
- Researchers propose that these three concerns facing women leaders should be explored and integrated into the ongoing investigations of the construct of authentic leadership. This will result in authentic leadership being a more inclusive concept and an ideal toward which all leaders can strive.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- The criticism that authentic leadership places an inordinate emphasis on the self and individual agency vs. the self in relation to others is relevant to the gendered nature of authentic leadership. “The emphasis on leaders being true to themselves so that they can influence others through displays of their values and beliefs is curiously one-sided” (Eagly, 2005, p. 460). Eagly (2005) proposed that attention be given to the features of authenticity that exist in the relationships between leaders and followers, since leadership is about followers’ reactions as well as leader’s actions. The processes that occur between a leader’s enactment of values and her followers’ connection with those values is a core aspect of relational authenticity as defined by Eagly (2005).
- One investigation of the relationship between authentic leadership, gender, psychological capital, and positive work climate found that the predominantly male authentic leaders provided a slightly less positive climate for female than for male followers (Woolley et al., 2011). These authors proposed that the values between the male leaders and female followers may have been incongruent, or the operating definition of authentic leadership may be inherently masculine.
- Following this argument, Ibarra (2015) also suggests that the operating definition of authentic leadership is based on individualistic (traditionally seen as masculine) vs. collective (traditionally seen as feminine) ideals. Considering women in leadership roles, the arguments have been presented that women are not always accepted as legitimate leaders due to gender bias (e.g., role incongruity, Eagly and Karau, 2002). Thus a female leader may experience feelings of being the outsider with a greater difficulty in obtaining her followers’ trust and acceptance as an authentic leader.