Découvrez mon article publié sur le site du Financial Times
j'y invite les Business schools a prendre leur responsabilité s'agissant de la reproductions des stérotypes managériaux....
Male stereotype of a leader persists
By Valérie Petit
Business schools must take responsibility for perpetuating the same
image of a chief
I have been
teaching leadership to business school students for more than a decade and
every year I ask my students to do the same exercise: to match three words and
three names with the term “leader”.
Year after year, they talk about
charisma, vision and power and they throw out the names of famous leaders such
as Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and Napoleon – we are in France, after all! I then
ask them to do the same exercise with the words “masculine” and “feminine”.
I borrowed this exercise from Judith
Rosener who published an article in 1995 on the masculinisation of leadership.
Every year the replies I receive confirm what Rosener demonstrated almost 20
years ago: a leader is a man with so-called masculine characteristics, ie he is
rational, assertive, linear and in complete control of his emotions.
I find this situation troublesome
given that more than half my students are women. I am a teacher who cares about
seeing all her students express leadership that is both genuine and effective.
I am also a researcher conducting research into the characteristics and impact
of company directors’ leadership.
In both these capacities, I think
that business schools need to be more aware of the stereotypes they are passing
on and should be more committed to changing them.
In terms of leadership, only the
ability to lead and motivate others positively should matter. Recent research
on gender and leadership shows that employees hardly differentiate any more
between a female manager and a male manager.
©Roger Beale
This is what I teach in my
leadership classes, but apparently this is not what my students believe. They
believe leadership is the result of a process of attribution, distorted by a
number of stereotypes and preconceived opinions about leaders. The stereotype
of a leader therefore determines who will be regarded as a leader and who will
not, as well as who will consider themselves to be a leader and who will
abandon any hope of becoming one.
The persistence of the male and
masculine stereotype of a leader is one reason why there is a lack of diversity
at the top of companies and yet we rarely discuss this issue. Imagining a woman
in the role of a leader, or imagining that female qualities such as taking care
of others might be a lever for the most powerful leadership, are considered
incongruous.
Society’s entrenched stereotype not
only deprives us of female leaders but also deprives us of effective leaders.
For whatever our very masculine views on the matter are, consideration for
others, the ability to listen and personal integrity prove to be more effective
than assertiveness and authoritarianism.
We are in the midst of a paradox in
the form of the gap between real leadership (which we effectively pursue every
day) and fantasized leadership (which we imagine to be leadership). In reality
we prefer androgynous leadership and do not take a leader’s gender into
consideration, but in our heads things are very different and we continue to
imagine a charismatic, assertive man.
When it is a question of recruiting
and selecting a leader, fantasy often takes control. This is a paradox that may
lead us to choose leaders who we do not want and who may turn out to be
completely ineffective or even destructive.
If business schools really want to
contribute to gender equality and enable their brightest female students to
influence the future of businesses and society; and if the schools really want
to contribute to better business administration and train leaders who are both honest
and effective, then it is time to assume our responsibility with respect to the
perpetuation of and damage caused by this unfair, counter-productive image of a
leader. It is not enough merely to teach generous, positive theories of
leadership, theories which in reality students do not believe in.
It is time to follow a different
path to promote female leadership. Not by focusing on male/female differences
and the fight against gender stereotypes, but by proposing an alliance between
men and women in which together they rebuild the stereotype of a leader to
create leadership which is open and productive and benefits both men and women
and ultimately companies.
The Martin Scorsese film The
Wolf of Wall Street presents a world dominated by power-hungry, brutal
and highly charismatic male leaders. It would be wrong to think that this 1980s
stereotype has disappeared. Urgent action is needed and business schools have
an important role to play.
Firstly, by updating and challenging
the stereotype of a leader in management and leadership classes and also by
offering students the opportunity to develop a new definition of a leader, one
that is more open and more effective. In this way, business schools might also
succeed in eliminating another stereotype: that of business schools that train
only conventional managers in boring dark suits.
