Women Leaders' Perspectives and Experiences of Leadership Development
Nicole Stelter-Flett

Abstract

Ideas and theories that consider the intersection of leader diversity and development needs are in the beginning stages of exploration and understanding. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand how women in organizational leadership roles describe their lived experiences of leadership development. Women leaders participated in semistructured interviews with the researcher to explore the participants' perspectives and lived experience of leadership development. Five core meanings and themes were elucidated from interview responses using phenomenological analysis methods. Each theme is discussed and recommendations for future research are considered. The results of this study can be used to inform specific individual-level considerations for women's leadership development, improve leadership development applications, and describe potential actions needed to address the issues that influence women's leadership applications.

Women Leaders' Perspectives and Experiences of Leadership Development

Ideas and theories that consider the intersections and influences of leader diversity with leader development needs are in the beginning stages of exploration and understanding. Much of the leadership development literature to date has focused on application and decisions about technique while leaving out attention to the impact of diverse learning styles, participants' culture and expectations, and unique development needs based on the needs and impact of diverse leaders (Indvik, 2001). This research study attempts to address some of these issues by exploring the way women in organizational leadership roles attribute meaning to and describe their leadership development experiences. Attempting to answer this question can mean a better understanding of what women might need to engage in successful leadership development.

Compared with leadership theory and application, the field of leadership development has received little empirical attention (Collins, 2002) and it has focused chiefly on generating theory for how, when, and why leadership development programs or activities should be introduced into an organizational human resource strategy (Collins, 2002; Yukl, 2002). Large gaps remain in the research, however, for exploring and addressing individual-level effects on leadership development activities and effectiveness.

The lack of leader-specific development information is particularly sparse for describing and studying how women and minorities experience their own leadership development. Some researchers have hypothesized that women, although continuing to grow in number in the workforce and increasingly represented in leadership roles, have different experiences and needs for leadership development (Indvik, 2001; Yukl, 2002). The results of this study hold important implications for the field since the number of women and minorities in leadership positions continues to grow (Girion, 2001) and organizations are forced to reconcile diverse workforces and dynamic markets with their human capital development strategies and needs for leadership (Fulmer, 2001). More and more organizations recognize the need to attend to the variable contexts of leadership development (Hernez-Broome & Hughes, 2004). Clarifying the unique needs and experiences of women in leadership development is important for building both the knowledge base of the research literature and identifying effective development practices.

There has been sufficient research focused on applied leadership (Collins, 2002) including exploring gender differences. Unlike leadership development, the field of applied leadership has worked to address individual-level considerations from gender and culturally diverse perspectives, often focusing on gender differences (see Stelter, 2002 for a summary of the literature regarding gender differences in applied leadership). This study is not comparative between the genders nor focused on applied leadership. Rather, it seeks to build the knowledge base specifically for the leadership development field by exploring and describing the specific development experiences of women leaders. As with career development research (Zunker, 2002), exploring women's unique needs and experiences of leadership development can help bridge the gap that currently exists between the sub fields of career development, applied leadership, and leadership development by improving women's chances for success in leadership roles.

Definition of Terms for this Study

Leadership Development

For the purposes of this study, leadership development is defined as personal leadership training and development activities that occur at an individual level and can consist of two different approaches: formal training programs (e.g., MBA programs, leadership development seminars) and developmental or experiential activities (e.g., coaching, mentoring, special assignments, action learning; Yukl, 2002). The purpose of these efforts is to increase the capacity and skill of an individual person to successfully take on both informal or formal leadership roles and processes within an organization (Day, 2001; McCauley, Moxley, & Van Velsor, 1998). This definition and study construct involves an important assumption: the skills of leadership can be learned and developed over time and are not exclusive to those "born with them."

Women in Leadership Roles

The focus of this study is women in leadership roles within an organizational setting who have experienced leadership development. This definition is a limitation to the sample size and generalizability of the results. This definition informs the scope of the study and literature review.

Review of Research

Leadership development is a broad term with broad application possibilities. Much of the contemporary development literature has focused on general recommendations without a lot of attention to the "significant variables" of individual culture, background, and development needs (Derr, Roussillon, & Bournois, 2002, p. xi). This presents not only a drawback of the research literature, but also an important issue for application where individual needs and characteristics are important for carrying out successful strategies for leadership development (Roussillon, 2002).

Leadership development is an important issue in various contexts: social, political, and business. Contemporary strategic human capital management in any organizational environment involves a well-developed plan to incorporate employee and leader diversity regardless of whether the corporation in question is organized along multinational lines or serves a multinational customer base (Iverson, 2000). Definitions of successful leadership development are beginning to highlight developing skills to manage and lead diverse workforces while also noting and adapting to the changing nature of the world's organizations (Indvik, 2001). Although these evolutions present an important challenge to many of the world's industries and their understanding and implementation of leadership development, the specific needs of diversity leadership for development is largely missing from the literature to date. Market competition and the pace of change in the business environment means that leaders-to-be can utilize leadership development to adapt their own behaviors and thinking and lead others in their organizations to do the same to keep the organization viable in an ever evolving market (Fulmer, 2001). Leadership development, and especially development of minority leaders, is likely to take center stage as a means to keep pace and accomplish strategic objectives (Mitchell & Poutiatine, 2001).

Leadership development often takes place within the larger plan or context of individual career development. In the context of this specific research, and the field of leadership development generally, it is important to consider how and why career and leadership development research findings differ. Where the leadership development literature is just beginning to consider individual-level effects to training application and outcomes, the career development literature has made recent meaningful attempts to explore and describe the individual-level considerations that must be made to foster positive development. Additionally, women's specific career development needs have been explored to a much greater extent than in the leadership development literature, and they offer a glimpse into the possible needs that might exist for would-be women leaders.

Social trends have influenced a greater awareness of diversity among people in general and organizational workforces in particular. Ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and gender have taken center stage in employee development and motivation considerations for the multinational organization that wants to reap the most reward from a diverse workforce. One area of impact is individual employee career development. Oftentimes, leadership development activities play a role in the larger context of one's career development.

Women's career development is unique in that women must confront and find ways to overcome internalized and environmental pressures associated with gender-role stereotyping, devaluation of feminine characteristics, conflicts associated with work-family ambitions, and the need to find balance between personal and community expectations (Douglas, 2001). Only recently (early 1970s) have women gained equal footing in formal business training opportunities through the mandates set forth by Title VII (Blair-Loy, 1999). Since then, women have increasingly participated in graduate level educational programs, realizing leadership roles as an integral part of their career planning, and even stand to outnumber men in management roles by the year 2030 (Girion, 2001). Despite these trends, women continue to struggle against societal and cultural norms that can create role conflict and undermine their career development activities and support systems (Zunker, 2002). Gender differences in career development may be particularly challenging for providing appropriate tools and support for women seeking career development opportunities like leadership development.

Women's Career Paths

Career paths are an integral part of leadership development. Career development theorists have argued that women's career paths are fundamentally unique from those of men because of the requirement that women must learn to challenge and overcome gender-role stereotypes (Zunker, 2002). Women's career paths are more unique for their interdependence (rather than separation from) on the influences of family, spouse, and family/life events (Blair-Loy, 1999). Gomez, Cooke, Fassinger, Prosser, Mejia, and Luna (2001) argued this point further by explaining that women's career paths are characterized by work and life choices that require negotiation and compromise between their own personal expectations for dual-role success (e.g., work and family). This type of push and pull can serve to mold a woman's career choice and path into a series of unplanned or haphazard career decisions that can create a nonlinear and sometimes disordered career path trajectory (Gomez, et al., 2001). Women have often reported perceptions of their own successful career paths as unusual or marked by unplanned flukes and accidents where they were unable to feel control over their own career choices (Blair-Loy, 1999). An assessment of women's career paths by Blair-Loy found that the paths often appear turbulent and winding, influenced by various social and cultural values that do not prioritize women's career hopes over the needs of others in their families and communities. How women assess and respond to these competing influences and expectations makes women's career development needs unique. This effect has also been seen in women's leadership studies as expectations can influence others' perceptions and expectations of a woman leader (Stelter, 2002).

Much of the career development literature offered approaches the unique needs of women from a theoretical standpoint, focusing on the general impacts of context (family and culture) or a specific field (e.g., academia-Brown, 2000; finance-Blair-Loy, 1999) on overall career. From the perspective of specific career development activities, the career development literature again offers some theoretical suggestions for how women's participation and needs might be different. Further exploring the specific subfield of women's leadership development as a career development activity helps to fill a gap in both literature fields.

Women's leadership development experiences may be different since there are gender differences in career development and applied leadership. Indvik (2001) argued that gender differences in leadership create unique circumstances for women's leadership development. Indvik's research argued that women leaders must go to greater lengths than their male counterparts to be promoted, including marked adaptation of work behaviors and increased time and energy negotiating internal and social expectations that create role conflict. This mirrors the research literature for women's career development reviewed in the earlier section. In addition, Indvik (2001) and Yukl (2002) argued that women's access to resources and opportunities for leadership and career development is affected by cultural meanings and values ascribed to the genders. Where these gender perceptions and values are regarded as less than, research has suggested that women have a more difficult time accessing opportunities for leadership development (Yukl, 2002).

Contemporary women's leadership research has provided an incomplete picture of what it means to be a leader and a woman and offers only limited insights to their experiences (Indvik, 2001). This missing piece in the literature represents potential problems where applied leadership development fails to consider individual differences and needs. In the following sections, this study will provide a review of feminist theory and qualitative methods. These sections will outline how feminist research methodologies stand to contribute to understanding these questions and filling the gaps in the research literature to provide a more balanced view and be more useful to the leadership development field as a whole.

Incorporating Feminist-Oriented Research Methods for Leadership Development

Improving women's leadership development is important on several social and organizational fronts. For example, women bring creative, unique ways of thinking to leadership and leadership situations (Rubin, 2001). Better accounting for women's experiences of leadership development can provide the argument for improving development initiatives, more accurately inform interested women what they need to do to participate in leadership development and advance, and clarify subtle patterns of discrimination that can impede organizational excellence (Indvik, 2001). Being able to understand and analyze the unique experiences of those pursuing leadership development, and especially the minority groups among them, can improve our abilities to implement successful leadership development programs in various organizational and social contexts.

Reinharz (1992), a leader in the feminist theory and research movement, advocated for the use of feminist methods in organizational research because of their versatility and ability to acknowledge and manage multiple contexts. By using feminist methodologies to more accurately assess individual-level experiences of leadership development, there may be more information available about what form of leadership development activities are successful with groups previously considered nontraditional within the leadership field (e.g., women and cultural minorities) and whose needs and perspectives are underrepresented in the previous literature.

Besides finding out what leadership development techniques work--when, how, and for whom--using feminist research methods to explore and more fully describe women's experiences of leadership development can support the breaking down of barriers still associated with women's advancement and leadership development (Indvik, 2001). Feminist research and methods that specifically target the female experience can clarify women's leadership issues and encourage effective and creative problem- solving rather than chase outmoded and inappropriately generalized ideas.

Methods

This study is necessarily qualitative and phenomenological since the focus and purpose of the research is to explore and describe the experience of the participating women leaders. Phenomenological methods allow us to adopt and examine a "frame of reference" and perspective of those who have lived the experience (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003, p. 243), and the feminist research perspective further informs this study building on past career development and gendered leadership literature that suggests potential gender differences in leadership development.

Participants

The participants chosen for this study must have had experienced leadership development and been able to describe and communicate their feelings and thoughts about that experience. This required a purposeful sampling process (Creswell, 1998; Patton, 2002). The process involved asking participants to describe not only these perceptions but also their imagination and memory for their experiences (Polkinghorne, 1989).

Participants were carefully chosen based on their ability to act as informants to the study question of women's experiences of leadership development. Initial participant selection was with women in organizational leadership roles whom the researcher already knew and each was asked whether they had experienced any form of leadership development. This was a criterion sampling strategy (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002) that would satisfy the requirements of phenomenological method wherein participants must meet the criterion of having experienced leadership development. A broader list of potential participants was developed from this list of contacts using a snowball sampling strategy (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002), whereby each participant was asked to provide contact information to other potential participants who they knew met the initial criterion of leadership development experience.

Using a combination of these qualitative sampling strategies (criterion and snowball) helped to improve the study's credibility (Patton, 2002). As this was a qualitative study and the purpose was not representativeness or generalizability of results, the sample size necessarily remained fairly small so that data collection and analysis were manageable (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Criterion and snowball sampling strategies served to generate a listing of potential participants until 16 participants were interviewed successfully.

Materials

Data Collection

This study utilized a demographic survey and semi-structured interview format and protocol to allow more flexibility in participant responses while maintaining a structured questioning approach (Patton, 2002). Participants completed a demographic survey consisting of questions about age, children, education level and content, leadership position history, industry experiences, and parents' careers and education information. The semi-structured interview questions focused the conversation between the researcher and the participants on their experiences and perceptions of current leadership role, decision- making influence, leadership values, role satisfaction, specific formal and informal (as defined in this study) development activities, development effectiveness, and the influence of both personal and professional experiences. Interview is the preferred method for data collection within a phenomenologically focused study (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003; Polkinghorne, 1989). Each participant received the same questions in the same order which improved study reliability, validity, and reliability (Patton, 2002).

Participant Recruitment

A combination of criterion and snowball sampling strategies were used to create a list of participants for this study. Women identified as potential participants were directly contacted by the researcher to review the purpose of the study and procedures. This recruitment procedure was repeated until 16 participants were identified and agreed to participate. Each participant was ensured anonymity.

Data Analysis

The phenomenological data analysis process focused on articulating a story that understands and communicates the common elements and essential meanings that make an experience what it is (Polkinghorne, 1989). Data analysis procedures included the following analysis steps: classification, reduction, elimination, identification, application, and verification (Giorgi, 1985; Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003; Polkinghorne, 1989):

1. Classification. The interview transcriptions were read with the goal of breaking them down into large categories of experiential elements or "meaning units" to enable early analysis (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003, p. 252).
2. Reduction. The goal of this phase of the analysis process was to take the descriptions of the participants and transform them from a subjective and naïve description to higher-level concepts. Giorgi and Giorgi described this part of the procedure as reviewing raw descriptive data from the subject(s) using a psychological attitude that ultimately translates subjects' meaning units into "psychologically explicit" material (2003, p. 252). The researcher attempted to avoid psychological jargon to mitigate the positivist effect of imposing psychological theory and constructs which would have compromised the phenomenological perspective (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003).
3. Elimination. The reduced list of experiential elements was then reviewed for concepts that were essential to the experience. Those concepts or descriptions that are not essential were eliminated from the list.
4. Identification. This phase of the analysis process involved grouping the list of elements and concepts into hypotheses about the essential meaning and description of women leaders' lived experience of leadership development. The goal of this step was to introduce the first-draft description of the structure of the subjects' lived experience of leadership development (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003). The stories or hypotheses developed at this phase were presented to the participants for review and comment for subjective accuracy and authenticity to their lived experiences.
5. Verification. The draft report was submitted to the participants so that each could review the analysis and make comments as necessary. This process helped to ensure both credibility and validity to the research (Patton, 2002) while confirming participants' voices were heard in a way that is genuine (Reinharz, 1992). A second and final draft of the report was completed following a review and inclusion of participant comments.

Triangulation and Credibility

Method triangulation (dual sampling techniques and multiple analysis perspectives) and theoretical triangulation (leadership, career development, and leadership development) strategies were utilized to improve study credibility, a factor in qualitative studies (Patton, 2002).

Results

Each participant completed a demographic background questionnaire before the interview meeting. The questionnaire asked for general personal and professional demographic information to help describe their wide-ranging educational, professional, and industry experience. The age group breakdown of the 16 participants is represented in Table A1.

Table A1.

Participants' Age Groupings

Fifteen of the women leaders taking part in this study were at least 40- years- old. There were three single women, nine married, and four divorced. None of the women were widowed or identified herself as living with a domestic partner. The range of children was from having no children to having three with the children's age ranges from 9 months to 38-years-old. Ten of the women self-identified their ethnic backgrounds as White, with some of those further clarifying the influence of Italian, English, and German heritage. One of the women was adopted and noted this in the questionnaire. The remaining 6 women leaders self-identified their ethnicity using the following descriptions: French and Irish, Native American and Irish, Greek American, Asian American, African/Caribbean American, and Italian American.

The women leaders were asked to describe their own educational and professional experiences by categories. These categories included the level and concentration of educational degrees awarded, the number of years spent in various leadership positions, and the types of industries where they had had experience in a professional capacity. The different degree awards and types are represented in Table A2.

Table A2

Participants' Educational Degrees Awarded

Fourteen of the women had multiple degrees of different levels. Twelve of the women had multiple degrees from different disciplines of study. Table A3 represents the number of degrees per field of study as reported by the participants. As detailed in this table, the educational backgrounds of the women leaders in this study were varied.

Table A3

Participants' Areas of Study/Degree Concentration