Dean Rhee presents at the Rochester Business Journal's Women's Leadership Summit

This past month I had an opportunity to present some of the key findings of our studies on women’s leadership at a leadership summit attended by close to 700 participants in Rochester, NY.  It would be hard to duplicate my one-hour talk, but here are a few key points that were delivered during my presentation.

- Women leaders have to face certain perceptual biases that male leaders do not.  In our study, we found male leaders were more likely to be perceived to be as effective than female leaders regardless of their leadership styles.
- Authoritarian female leaders were perceived to be the worst leaders - this presents a double-edged reality for women leaders who have been encouraged to be more assertive in their styles.  This is often described in the literature as a gender-role conflict. 
- In the executive graduate program that focused on leadership development, women participants, more than male participants, focused on developing self-confidence and experienced how self-confidence allowed them to be more likely to explore new opportunities and take initiative.

We learned during our studies that in order for anyone, regardless of gender, to develop and grow, we need to provide a certain type of environment in our organizations.  The environment that is learning focused (rather than performance focused), psychologically safe, and risk free (rather than unsafe and risky), and positive and optimistic (rather than negative and pessimistic), is more likely to be helpful in developing leadership competencies and transforming people in organizations (make it a life-changing experience).

- Dean Kenneth Rhee