Whilst what you say may be arguable, the evidence you present is very thin and so if your objective was to simply write a controversial opinion piece then you succeeded. If however you were trying to advance a theory which could assist the further development of the requirements of great leaders in order to serve humanity better, I think you failed.
I also think that the three qualities you list are more related to management than leadership and since Peter Drucker has said everything which needs to be said on that subject, it would be a waste of words to say anything more.
Leadership and for that matter management can be observed almost everywhere. And to be sure, its effectiveness, even if compared between identical roles in identical circumstances, will vary considerably. It is probable since gender differences do exist, perhaps even of the kind you describe, that these differences may affect the ability of any given leader to lead in any given set of circumstances. It is unlikely that they will always negatively affect only one gender.
Leaders of large scale change recognise that their effectiveness will be determined by those who follow. So an important quality is the ability to determine the range of skills and competences required and to recruit and deploy others acting together to deliver the aim. That is they must build a team, the leadership team. Often the leader, who may have an outline vision or maybe not, is not able to develop a coherent strategy without having first built the team. It seems to me that most teams should include men and women and there is no reason that the leader of this team must be male. She very often in fact is not. In this World of interdependency, to rely on commands would be ill advised. Voluntership is preferable.
So if leaders exist outside of any strategy and may not have all the competences to develop any given strategy until they have secured support, which they may do by relinquishing absolute decision making powers, how do we know they are leaders? We know they are leaders because they have the ability to attract followers. And we humans fall in love for many strange reasons, many if not most of which are not rational. But I think there is something which humans value which might give a clue to a core quality of leadership. Authenticity. In a World which has moved from ‘trust me’ through ‘tell me’ to ‘show me’, there are fewer places to hide than before. What our leaders value will be transparent to a keen observer and so if what is observed is different to what has been said, the leader will be judged inauthentic. And he or she will fail to attract followers. Are women more or less authentic than men? I’m sure there will be a psychological study somewhere which expresses a view. I’m equally sure it’s pronouncements will be contestable.
Finally the two women sited are not perfect but that is something they share with all men. They both though beat their male counterparts in terms of headcount of followers.
And if I can offer an opinion, had both been more authentic we would now have the first female president of the USA and the Conservative party would have a landslide majority in the House of Commons.
And finally, finally. Three facts. Our monarch is a woman. Our prime minister is a woman. The head of the UK Supreme Court is a woman. Women not only can lead. They do lead.
