Leadership and Gender Differences

Introduction

Business ventures are currently facing all sorts of risks that seem to be endangering their very existence. There are economic, political, cultural, environmental, technological, and social challenges that force stakeholders, investors, employees, and state representatives to carefully analyse and project different strategic scenarios in order to sustain long-term business growth.

When looking at the specialized literature concerning the business environment, the analyses are being conducted from different perspectives. Having said that, they do converge toward a universally shared opinion, which is that leadership decisively influences the day-to-day business activities and their results.

Therefore, it is obvious that there should be a vested interest in finding the correct answers to questions that focus on a leader's activities, their competencies, style behaviour, and personality, as many of the already conducted research offer valuable results, whether they are congruent or complementary. Some of these studies show that without a willingness to lead, without a commitment toward the company's mission and vision, and without integrity, the notion of authentic leadership simply does not exist in a business environment. That is why, when choosing or preparing future leaders, there is a need to:

• Evaluate the people's desire to lead and favour a self-reflection process that will offer them answers to questions such as: what do you feel when others are interested in finding out your opinions? During a project, do you like asking your teammates challenging questions? Do you enjoy helping the members of your team finish their tasks on time and in good conditions? How do you value personal interests versus the team's ones? Can you enable an authentic team spirit when working with other people? Do you feel comfortable when other people take your ideas and put them into practice? Do you enjoy helping others to improve their skills and assuming a coaching/mentoring role? When personal conflicts arise, would you rather sort them out within the team, or do you let them continue? What are your feelings when noticing someone else being successful? Can you have a productive discussion when the others are disagreeing with your opinion? Do you see your team's problems as your own? Do you enjoy generating ideas and sharing them with your group?
• Evaluate the leader's commitment to the company's mission and vision. It is hard to imagine how you can convince others to give their best when attempting something that you, as the leader, don't put a real faith in. Certainly, with careful observation, we can notice the fact that, not by accident, the first company leaders were actually the ones who created the company. The founding leaders had a mission and a vision regarding the purpose of their organization, their customers, and the changes that they will create in their belonging industry. They took risks and made personal sacrifices before their company has become a successful one. They hired the first leaders from within the company, trained and groomed them, taught them what to do and how to behave. These leaders, in turn, carried on the same process until the human hierarchies were created in order for the company to fulfil its mission and vision.
• Evaluate integrity. That means that a leader's actions should be in line with his/her words, he/she should behave according to his/her team's expectations, to be authentic and express the expectations he/she has from his/her colleagues and teammates. Although that does not sound very difficult, reality shows that these sorts of promises are not all that easy to keep. In fact, it is quite challenging for people to keep their word and be an example, especially when under a great amount of stress.

Over the past few years, there have been quite a lot of careful, diverse studies regarding the leadership concept. Often, it is analysed alongside the gender characteristics, which further reveal some interesting tendencies in the future of the business world.

As far as we are concerned, in this present chapter, we wanted to delve into the potential relationship between gender and leadership style, while also looking for an answer to the following question: 'Are Men and Women Leading in the Same Way?' We wanted to highlight the main gender differences, to provide a critical comparative analysis, to discuss potential barriers that need to be overcome, and to find some ways of increasing organizational performance through a better leadership style.

Leadership is contextual, as people's individual and organizational characteristics lead to particular perceptions and behaviours. Therefore, we should not expect to find the best way of dealing with people. However, we are interested in finding a series of elements that might lead to a leader profile that is able to influence the business environment in a positive manner. Therefore, the focus in this chapter will not be placed on the gender differences by themselves but on the ways these differences can positively influence the organizational performance. Actually, one of the main ideas that should be stressed right from the beginning is that we agree with the viewpoint of existing two different leadership styles - masculine and feminine - , but it is also important to add that the differences are not a result of the gender by itself and in fact refer to human traits that are only traditionally attributed to men and/or women.

Our opinions take into account not only many of the viewpoints expressed in the specialized literature but also the results of our own research, which was conducted over the past 2 years, through a survey and interviews with responsible factors in the Romanian business environment.