Women Are Better Leaders When We Let Them Lead

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman revisit the biggest conundrum in business, in Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills: women score higher than men in leadership skills, but hold small fractions of leadership jobs.

In two articles from 2012 (here and here) we discussed findings from our analysis of 360-degree reviews that women in leadership positions were perceived as being every bit as effective as men. In fact, while the differences were not huge, women scored at a statistically significantly higher level than men on the vast majority of leadership competencies we measured.

We recently updated that research, again looking at our database of 360-degree reviews in which we ask individuals to rate each leaders’ effectiveness overall and to judge how strong they are on specific competencies, and had similar findings: that women in leadership positions are perceived just as — if not more — competent as their male counterparts.

Still, the disturbing fact is that the percentage of women in senior leadership roles in businesses has remained…