Worrying About Leadership: Is It a Liability or an Advantage for Leadership of Women and Men?
Worries about leadership (WAL) is a new construct tapping worries an individual may feel about possible negative consequences of accepting a leadership role. Three studies investigate how WAL is associated with men's and women's willingness for leadership and their perceived leadership pot...
Saved in:
| Published in: | Frontiers in psychology Vol. 13; p. 675522 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Switzerland
Frontiers Media S.A
25-03-2022
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Worries about leadership (WAL) is a new construct tapping worries an individual may feel about possible negative consequences of accepting a leadership role. Three studies investigate how WAL is associated with men's and women's willingness for leadership and their perceived leadership potential rated by others. The first is a laboratory study on 328 participants, which shows that WAL is negatively associated with women's willingness for leadership, while it is not related to that of men. The second study, which is a field study with multilevel-nested data from 429 employees and 101 supervisors, reveals that male subordinates are more likely to receive a favorable judgment of leadership potential by their supervisors when their WAL increases, while female subordinates' WAL is irrelevant to this judgment. The final study, which is an experimental study on 122 supervisors, shows that supervisors view hypothetical male leadership candidates with high WAL as having higher warmth and lower competence (than those with low WAL), which both mediate the effect of WAL on judgments of their leadership potential made by the supervisors. Even though supervisors also view female candidates with high WAL as warmer, this does not evoke higher perceptions of leadership potential. Implications for increasing gender parity in leadership are discussed. |
|---|---|
| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Edited by: Pawan Budhwar, Aston Business School, United Kingdom This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Reviewed by: Kristina Kögler, University of Stuttgart, Germany; Yue Yuan, Beijing Normal University, China |
| ISSN: | 1664-1078 1664-1078 |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.675522 |