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Do Women Make Better Leaders?
Research has shown that the transformational style is the most effective leadership style in engaging and retaining staff within organisations, particularly when companies rely on innovation to stay competitive. Alice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, Chicago conducted research which revealed that men are more likely to use a "transactional" management style.
She suggests that the transformational leadership style may suit women because it includes nurturing aspects, and women are traditionally socialized to be nurturers. Other studies have found that women who instead use a tough "command and control" leadership style meet with resistance and suspicion from employees. Women striving for leadership roles may also have to meet a higher standard than men. They may therefore adapt their leadership tactics along the way to fit the more effective transformational style.
Karen Burns argues that female leadership styles produce happier and more loyal employees. Women can be superior motivators, listeners, and nurturers, better at working out compromises and consensus building. All this translates to better employee performance, productivity, and innovation.
Karen Burns, Working Girl, is the author of The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use, to be released by Running Press in April 2009.
