Female leaders don't benefit from charisma like men do, and that's down to our blind spots
The problem may be that even when women do all the right things, when they behave exactly like effective leaders, they are still evaluated differently to men who behave in precisely the same way. File picture
Picture two colleagues presenting the same proposal to the same room. Same slides, same argument, same confidence. One is described as a natural leader. The other is told she came across as a little aggressive.
There's no shortage of advice given to women leaders in professional and civic life. Speak confidently. Develop executive presence. Be assertive. Be charismatic. Be inspiring. Lean in.
The advice keeps coming, and the industries built around delivering it keep growing. But nobody mentions the terms and conditions.
Here's what the research actually shows: the problem may not be that women need to be taught how to lead.
The problem may be that even when women do all the right things, when they behave exactly like effective leaders, they are still evaluated differently to men who behave in precisely the same way.
In a review of dozens of studies on leadership behaviour, my colleagues and I found that when we looked only at research that directly measured what leaders actually did, rather than how they were perceived, women and men largely behave similarly as leaders. But they are not treated similarly.
Most of us have seen this play out. A man speaks with conviction and he's described as confident. A woman says the same thing and suddenly she's "a bit much". He's decisive. She's abrasive. He's visionary. She's unrealistic.
Whether you've experienced it yourself or watched it happen to someone else, the feeling is familiar even when the words for it are hard to find: the same behaviour doesn't always seem to land the same way.
My own research on charismatic leadership backs up what many women already suspected: women leaders often have to navigate a fine print.
Charismatic communication, things like storytelling, rhetorical questions, and speaking with moral conviction, is one of the most powerful tools available to leaders. It can be learned and practised, and it genuinely works.
In a large-scale series of experiments involving over 3,000 people across the United States, we found that charismatic communication benefited both women and men. Women who used these techniques were seen as charismatic and effective, and in some cases generated more support from followers than their male counterparts.
But there was a catch. For women, charisma came with terms and conditions attached. A fine print. Women only received the full benefit of charismatic communication when they already held a formal position of authority.
For women still making their case for a seat at the table, the same techniques were less effective. For men, no such condition applied. Men benefited from charisma regardless of their title.
Context mattered too, but again only for women. An identical speech, delivered by the same woman, was received differently depending on whether the setting was typically feminine or masculine. Men's charisma was unaffected by context.
This has real implications for professional and civic life. Women working in finance, law, or engineering may find their charisma lands very differently than it would in healthcare, education, or the non-profit sector.
The same is true in Irish political life, where women make up just 25% of TDs despite gender quotas designed to close that gap.
Women trying to win a seat, make their case at a selection convention, or build a public profile, are doing so without the formal authority that our research shows amplifies charisma.
This is precisely the moment when charisma could make the most difference. And yet it is also the moment it is least likely to work for women. Telling women to be more charismatic misses the point if charisma only works for them once they're already in charge.
The temptation, when confronted with findings like these, is to double down on advice to women. Learn the charismatic techniques. Project more confidence. Work harder to overcome bias.
But that response misdiagnoses the problem. If the same behaviour produces different outcomes depending on who is displaying it, the issue is not with the behaviour.
It’s with how we see women and how rarely we stop to question whether we are seeing them clearly.
What would it look like to take our own blind spots seriously?
It would mean building evaluation processes for promotions, candidate selections, and board appointments that are structured enough to reduce the role of subjective first impressions and gender bias.
It would mean organisations and political parties being honest about the fact that informal judgments of "leadership potential" are not neutral.
And it would mean voters, hiring panels, and selection committees asking themselves a harder question when a woman doesn't seem quite as compelling as her male counterpart: is that a difference in what she did, or a difference in how I saw it?
As the advice to women leaders continues to mount, here’s the advice nobody gives: stop asking women to work around the fine print. Start asking why it’s still there.
- Dr Mary Hausfeld is an assistant professor in the Department of Management & Marketing at University of Limerick
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