Historically, successful women in organizations have had to worry about the glass ceiling, which as you know by now, is the invisible barrier that keeps them from ascending to the top of their organization. Well, ladies, I have some bad news. Not only does the glass ceiling still exist, but now you've got to worry about the glass cliff as well.
What's the glass cliff you say? That's the question that Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam from University of Exeter address in a Harvard Business Review article from January of 2011. What the researchers discovered was that women have a better chance of breaking through the glass ceiling when their organization faces a crisis. Therefore, the women find themselves on the glass cliff, presumedly this is due to the nature of taking a senior leadership role during a crisis situation and facing the steep decline in success does not follow their appointment.
To test their theory the researchers asked college students to read articles about a company with a retiring CEO. There were multiple sets of articles in which leadership was historically men or women and also the company was doing well or poorly financially.
What they found was that regardless of historical leadeship gender, participants preferred a male leader when the company was performing well and a female leader when the company was performing poorly. So the real question is...why?
One thought is that a company in peril needs to be run more delicately than a company hitting on all cylinders. That is to say that participants may have felt that a woman's intuition and caring nature may lead to better leadership during crisis when employees will be concerned about their jobs and characteristics typically associated with women go further than thost associated with men.
Perhaps the respondants thought about when they were younger and in the worst of times they could turn to their mother for the right answers. I dont' really know the why, but the what is that women seem to be viewed as better leaders in times of crisis, but not in times of calm.
Glass ceiling, glass cliff maybe there will be a glass elevator someday, but for now it seems that women are either stuck to the ceiling or left teetering on the edge.
Adam Porth
http://hbr.org/2011/01/how-women-end-up-on-the-glass-cliff/ar/pr
No comments:
Post a Comment