Gender, Leadership, and Navigating through the Hierarchy: Behavioral Patterns and Managers’ Assessments of Performance, Promotion Potential and Career Derailment

Abstract

Through the late 1990’s, women advanced rapidly in the business world, but today there are signs that progress has slowed. Though a significant amount of research has investigated gender, leadership style and disparities in higher level leadership, little research has examined how behavioral patterns and career outcomes are related within organizational levels and in field-based settings. In addition, little research has explored gender and the multifaceted aspects of performance, such as promotion potential and career derailment. This dissertation contributes to filling this gap in the literature by examining a variety of organizational stakeholders’ perceptions of leadership behaviors, managers’ assessments of performance, and their relationships across genders. Secondary data from over 3,000 participants from client organizations of a talent management firm were analyzed to: (a) examine the relationship between promotion potential and career derailment across genders; (b) examine differences in manager, peer, direct report, and self competency ratings across gender; (c) explore differences in managers’ ratings of a four factor performance scale across gender and explore how well performance ratings are predicted by competency ratings; and (d) examine the relationship between peer, direct report, and self competency ratings and managers’ ratings of a four factor performance scale. Overall, this research showed that there were few differences in competency ratings across gender, however men tended to be rated higher on business problem solving leadership, and women tended to be rated higher on task-oriented, interpersonal, and intrapersonal leadership. Across all organizational levels, managers rated women higher on individual performance and leadership effectiveness and they rated men as more likely to derail. However, there were few differences in ratings of promotion potential. Competency ratings were more predictive of performance for men than they were for women, suggesting that ratings for women tend to be less consistent. Future research should continue to examine the ways in which managers form their views and recommendations of employees’ performance and promotion potential to ensure greater equity in these processes.