Leadership in men and women: Differences on leadership styles and the relationship between styles and predictors of organizational outcome variables

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to know whether men and women have different leadership styles. We include the main leadership styles studied from a psychosocial perspective: autocratic-democratic, task-relationship orientation and transformational-transactional. We also want to know a) if men and women have different perceptions of the relation between those styles, b) as well as the predictors of effectiveness, satisfaction and extra-effort they consider the best ones. 118 leaders (65 males and 53 females) were asked to fill in a questionnaire on these topics. Results show that there are no significant differences between males and females in leadership styles. However, they perceive the relation between styles and predictors of outcome variables in a different way.