Leadership Over-Emergence in Self-Managing Teams: The Role of Gender and Countervailing Biases

Abstract

We examine leadership over-emergence, defined as instances when the level of one's leadership emergence is higher than the level of one's leadership effectiveness, in a sample of intact self-managing teams who worked together for a period of seven months. We draw from Gender Role Theory and Expectancy Violation Theory to examine the role of gender in predicting leadership over-emergence. Building on arguments from Gender Role Theory, we find that all else equal, men over-emerge as leaders. However, Expectancy Violation Theory suggests that women are likely to benefit from a countervailing bias. Specifically, women are attributed with higher levels of leadership emergence than men when they engage in agentic leadership behaviors -even if the level of the behaviors exhibited by men is exactly the same. Because the impact of these behaviors on leadership effectiveness is not contingent on gender, however, women who engage in more task behaviors and boundary spanning behaviors in selfmanaging teams also over-emerge as leaders. We discuss the implications of this study for Gender Role Theory and Expectancy Violation Theory, along with practical implications for managing the problem of leadership over-emergence in work groups. AbstractWe examine leadership over-emergence, defined as instances when the level of one's leadership emergence is higher than the level of one's leadership effectiveness, in a sample of intact selfmanaging teams who worked together for a period of seven months. We draw from Gender Role Theory and Expectancy Violation Theory to examine the role of gender in predicting leadership over-emergence. Building on arguments from Gender Role Theory, we find that all else equal, men over-emerge as leaders. However, Expectancy Violation Theory suggests that women are likely to benefit from a countervailing bias. Specifically, women are attributed with higher levels of leadership emergence than men when they engage in agentic leadership behaviors -even if the level of the behaviors exhibited by men is exactly the same. Because the impact of these behaviors on leadership effectiveness is not contingent on gender, however, women who engage in more task behaviors and boundary spanning behaviors in self-managing teams also overemerge as leaders. We discuss the implications of this study for Gender Role Theory and Expectancy Violation Theory, along with practical implications for managing the problem of leadership over-emergence in work groups.

Gender and leadership emergence: A meta‐analysis and explanatory model

“…Despite substantial evidence establishing that leader effectiveness is composed of both task‐oriented and socially‐oriented components (Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, ; Stogdill, ), the current results suggest that exhibiting concern for others, sensitivity, and other communal proclivities makes one less likely to emerge as a leader, on average. Our finding that communion is devalued when making leader emergence judgments helps to explain recent research showing that women tend to underemerge as leaders given their levels of leadership effectiveness (Lanaj & Hollenbeck, ). These authors speculated that although individuals generally recognize communal behaviors as contributing to group success, these same behaviors do not, “trigger automatic perceptions of leadership emergence” (p. 1488).…”

“…In a comprehensive review of the gender‐leadership emergence literature, Eagly and Karau () found that men emerged as leaders more often than did women, yet evidence suggests that this gender gap in leader emergence is not due to gender differences in leader effectiveness (Lanaj & Hollenbeck, ; Paustian‐Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, ). Because leadership emergence refers to “whether” and “to what degree” an individual is perceived as a leader by others (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, ), the gender difference in leader emergence paints a troubling picture of the preconceptions women must overcome to obtain leadership roles.…”

Individual differences as antecedents of leader behavior: Towards an understanding of multi-level outcomes

“…The meta-analyses conducted by Eagly and Karau (1991) confirms this: men were more likely than women to emerge as leaders, although in another meta-analytical study both were found to be equally effective (Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995). Recent research has indeed found that men over-emerge (or inappropriately emerge) as leaders -that is chances of men becoming leader of a group when in fact they should not is greater than women (Lanaj & Hollenbeck, 2015). This discrepancy is suggested to be due to the social stereotypes of the role of men and women which create a barrier and a negative bias for women as leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002;S.…”

The Leadership Lab for Women: Advancing and Retaining Women in STEM through Professional Development

“…Having an understanding of implicit bias including workplace practices is also essential. Women are urged to understand and overcome gender bias (Lanaj and Hollenbeck, 2015); however, many women are not even aware when bias is occurring (Crosby, 1984, 1986). …”