While men still dominate the broking landscape, new studies have shown they may do well to take a leaf out of the books of their more feminine counterparts.
While men still dominate the broking landscape, new studies have shown they may do well to take a leaf out of the books of their more feminine counterparts.
Two new studies, conducted by the Australian Management Institute and BAV Consulting, have both independently come to the conclusion that the most effective leadership traits are those more commonly associated with women.
The Australian Management Institute studied 560 managers and their leadership styles, and then ranked them on their effectiveness as see by their subordinates and supervisors.
The most effective management styles were those involving what the report deemed ‘nurturing’ characteristics, including a high focus on relationships, collaboration and open communication.
The least effective, unsurprisingly, was the starkly contrasted ‘authoritarian’ approach.
Despite less than 6% of authoritarian leaders being rated as effective in their jobs, the management style was still found in one in seven Australian managers.
“The main implication of this research for practising managers is that in order to maximise effectiveness they should resist the temptation to be authoritarian in their approach and adopt a nurturing multi-style pattern of leadership,” said the report.
According to the figures, it was also clear that among the study participants “women have a better appreciation than men that nurturers make more effective leaders than authoritarians”.
Of the managers studied in the report, men were twice as likely as women to take an authoritarian approach, and almost half as likely to take a nurturing approach.
BAV consulting’s study of 64,000 people across 13 countries, revealed similar results: Eight of the top ten traits for effective leaders were voted as ‘feminine’ characteristics.
“Combined with hundreds of interviews with leaders worldwide, the data told us that the hyper-competitive masculine energy that built companies in the past might not lead to success in the future,” researches said.
More than 80 per cent of those surveyed believed that “today’s times require that we be more kind and empathetic to others” and that “power is now influence rather than control”.
This shift towards more ‘feminine’ characteristics, such as intuition, flexibility and patience, does not necessarily mean that your brokerage will be more effective under female leadership, found BAV Consulting, but that “men need to act less like men and more like fathers in the workplace”.
“The values of fatherhood can be learned and applied by any man, yet are undervalued as ‘soft’ and not applied to the workplace,” researchers said.
Destroying the boundaries between what is feminine and what is masculine, and understanding that emotional intelligence and empathy are crucial for any leader, is key to running a modern business.
“The lessons for the future are clear. Leadership that applies the lessons of fatherhood is the key to success in the post-recession economy, where the world is increasingly open, fragile and transparent.”
