Proof: Women Are Better Leaders than Men

In the Harvard Business Review, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman release the results of their study on men, women, and leadership.

In the confirmation category is our first finding: The majority of leaders (64%) are still men. And the higher the level, the more men there are: In this group, 78% of top managers were men, 67% at the next level down (that is, senior executives reporting directly to the top managers), 60% at the manager level below that.

Similarly, most stereotypes would have us believe that female leaders excel at “nurturing” competencies such as developing others and building relationships, and many might put exhibiting integrity and engaging in self-development in that category as well. And in all four cases our data concurred — women did score higher than men.

But the women’s advantages were not at all confined to traditionally women’s strengths. In fact at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows:

Read the rest: Are Women Better Leaders than Men? – Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman – Harvard Business Review.

I realize there’s a glass ceiling in business because of the “old boys’ club.” But we should be able to quickly counteract this trend in the church. Why, then, does the gender make-up of the church so heavily favor men in leadership?!?

HT: Michael Toy