With Professor Stajković about Ambiguous Trap of Women Leadership: How to Win when Rules are against You?
“Society expects leaders to exhibit agentic traits — such as power, dominance, and ambition. However, when women display these traits in order to be effective leaders, they are penalized, because agency does not align with social expectations that women should be communal, caring, and supportive. On the other hand, if women leaders emphasize their warmth and community orientation, they are then perceived as ineffective because they are seen as lacking decisiveness and authority. This is what we call the double bind.”
With these words, Professor Alexander D. Stajkovic opens up a deeper understanding of leadership in a time of global challenges and social transformation. In his lecture, delivered as a guest at the Days of Scientific Diaspora event organized by the University of Montenegro, Professor Stajkovic focused on the phenomenon of the double bind — a paradox faced by women leaders, especially during crises, where they are simultaneously expected to be both decisive and caring, authoritative and gentle.
“That’s why many women ask themselves: ‘How are we supposed to win?’ This double bind is clearly reflected in how leaders are evaluated — not only in formal performance reviews within organizations or in academic experimental studies, but also in how the media talks about leaders. You’ll notice that the rhetoric around whether a leader is effective often differs significantly depending on whether the leader is a man or a woman,” Stajkovic reflects.
In our conversation with him, we learn that his research shows women actually excel in such complex contexts: U.S. states led by women reported lower COVID-19 death rates, cities governed by women showed higher levels of racial inclusion and stronger economic outcomes, and the Black Lives Matter protests were least violent in cities where Black women served as police chiefs. Professor Stajkovic interprets these findings through the lens of Ethics of Care Leadership as well as an intersectional approach that highlights the power of identity shaped through both gender and race. Professor
Alexander D. Stajkovic is a full professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin School of Business (USA). He is a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and an affiliate of the African Studies Program at the same university. Over the course of his career, he was also a visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he had the privilege of working with the legendary psychologist Albert Bandura, whose mentorship left a lasting impact on his work. He has co-authored studies with numerous renowned scholars around the world, including Edwin Locke and Gary Latham — the founders of Goal Setting Theory.
On the occasion of his participation in the University of Montenegro’s scientific diaspora event, we spoke with Professor Stajkovic about his key research findings, the role of leadership in today’s society, the importance of scientific collaboration, and his advice for future generations of researchers.
Empathy as an Asset: Womens Leadership in Times of Crisis
PR UoM: Your research focuses on the "double bind" faced by female leaders, especially in times of crisis. What motivated you to explore this topic, and what fascinates you the most about female leadership?
PhD STAJKOVIC: I’ve always been interested in leadership styles, and how different styles influence the way people think, feel, and behave. Transformational leadership has been a foundational topic in my teaching for many years. Then, during COVID-19, as the world was watching a novel crisis unfold before our eyes, I started to notice that women leaders seemed to be approaching the response differently from men. This is when Kayla and I began the 2020 Journal of Applied Psychology study on United States governors and the relation between gender and mitigating COVID-19 death. We’ve now studied this topic across several studies, such as our examination of United States mayors and how mayor gender relates to better economic health in cities through its positive impact on racial inclusion, published in Journal of Business Ethics. Our latest study on female leadership, in Journal of Management, examined police chiefs and the relation of leader gender and race to mitigating street violence during the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the U.S. during the Summer of 2020. We have several more studies that in the revision process that also examined leadership and the relationship between a leader’s gender and outcomes during times of social crisis.
I’ve always admired women, and especially my mother, who rose up the ranks in her organization to a top role, and I’ve noticed that to succeed in these roles, women are held to different standards - it is not sufficient for them to adopt a leadership style more typical of men, characterized by ambition, competence, and self-efficacy. Instead, they must also balance this inherent expectation that society holds of women to be communal. Known as the double bind, because if a women acts agnatically, like men, to fulfill the ideal expectations of what people want in an effective leader, she is not considered a great leader because she is deemed to lack in communality. On the other hand, if a woman leader embraces her communality, she is also considered an ineffective leader because she is believed to lack the agentic qualities needed to lead effectively. Hence, for women in leadership positions, it is a lose-lose scenario. But, what I like about my most current research is that it highlights the strengths that women bring to leadership roles, and the balance that they strike between communality and agency, that enable them to overcome this double bind and be particularly effective during crises.
PR UoM : Your research indicates that states and cities led by women have more favorable outcomes in certain crises. What are some key factors that contribute to this advantage in female leadership, according to your findings?
PhD STAJKOVIC: In what we proposed as “Ethics of Care Leadership,” we found that women, on average, compared to men tend to value care as a moral virtue to a greater degree. Thus, in their approach to leadership they are more likely to embody a style characterized by an ethic of care by being inclusive, showing concern about the well-being of others, prioritizing community needs over individual needs, and taking more democratic approach to leading in a crisis.
PR UoM: You mention African-American women police chiefs who significantly impacted reducing violence during protests. How do you view the role of gender and ethnic diversity in leadership and its effect on social change?
PhD STAJKOVIC: In that study, we found a significant interaction between the race and gender of police chiefs in relation to reduced violence (measured three ways), across over 11,000 protests in the United States during summer of 2020. In our theoretical development, we call out the marginalized identity of black women, which has been historically studied from the angle of the disadvantages it confers. However, we make the case and find evidence to support it, that in certain situations, such as a crises that can be characterized as high-strength events - novel, critical, disruptive- and also mega-threats events, which are events that involve social identity, that the leadership style that Black women develop, through their unique, challenging journeys to the top, confers them a leadership advantage in such situations, which we called an intersectional leadership advantage. This advantage stems not only from the simple combination of being a woman and being Black, but from being a Black woman, which prompts them to develop resilience, lean into risk, and to have a heightened sensitivity to racial and social injustices. Thus, we suggest that followers, particularly during social justice related mega-threat events, are more likely to respond positively to their leadership style than, for example, other styles that may focus more on displays of strength and control.
PR UoM: In addition to your research, you are a professor at the University of Wisconsin. How do you convey your research findings to students, and how do you encourage them to think about leadership from a different perspective?
PhD STAJKOVIC: In all of my classes, I teach research. I believe university education should be based on science, rather than on reinterpretation and reiteration of personal experiences. Thus, in my MBA courses, I assign scientific articles - not only my own, but seminal articles in the fields and related to the various topics I teach on. I teach about many different leadership styles, not only those related to Ethics of Care or gendered nature of leadership, but also Transformational Leadership and Transactional Leadership. I encourage self-reflection and perspective shifting by having students complete validated questionnaires to measure these styles and traits and reflect on their own scores, culminating in a leadership analysis paper in which students think about the leadership style they currently embody based on their own scores, as well as what they aspire to be as a leader and articulate some ways to get there.
Womens advancement into leadership positions lags behind
PR UoM: Your studies in organizational behavior and leadership have broader social implications. How would you connect your findings to current societal challenges, such as gender equality and inclusion?
PhD STAJKOVIC: Despite increased progression of women’s rights, their ascension up the ladder to leadership roles lags behind. I choose to study women’s leadership effectiveness in the context of social crises for at least two reasons. One is the growing evidence that women might be more effective leaders than men in a crisis. Another one is that social crisis have a powerful ripple effect. This is in contrast to organizational leadership, which is also important but the stakeholders in such situations are typically fewer than say, people impacted by leadership during COVID-19, or across all U.S. cities. Ostensibly, the findings are starting to converge on the effectiveness of women’s leadership. The more we educate society about these empirical findings, the more we can learn about leadership.
PR UoM: You were a visiting scholar at Stanford University. How have these international experiences shaped your research approach, and have you had opportunities to collaborate on projects with other universities?
PhD STAJKOVIC: Collaborating with the legendary psychology professor, and my mentor, Albert Bandura of Stanford University was quite formative, and shaped my approach to thinking about research and the triadic reciprocal effects of person, behavior, and environment on all we do. Perhaps this is why my latest focus has been on studying women’s leadership during high-strength social crises, because it is the unique qualities of women (person) and their leadership style (behavior )that are particularly important in such contexts (environment). I’ve had the pleasure of co-authoring research with other distinguished researchers such as Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, fathers of goal theory. My other co-authors span multiple universities across the world.
Global Collaboration and Local Roots: Connecting the Diaspora and Science
PR UoM: You participate in the "Days of Scientific Diaspora" at the University of Montenegro. How do you assess the importance of such events for connecting researchers from different fields, and how important is it to extend discussions about leadership and social change to the international level?
PhD STAJKOVIC: This conference and such events that connect researchers from different fields are particularly important for scientific progress. We are all grateful to Prof. dr. Veljko Milutinovic for organizing it. It is when we get outside of our disciplinary silo, i.e., our field of study, that we open our mind to new ways of thinking that can spark social and personal change. Leadership and social change are consequential topics globally. I am greatly looking forward to it!
PR UoM: What advice would you give to young researchers and students who wish to study leadership and organizational behavior? What are the key skills and knowledge they should develop to contribute to this field?
PhD STAJKOVIC: This profession is really a calling. Study something that you feel strongly about, and everyday that you work will not feel like work, but will bring you intellectual pleasure. To succeed, immerse yourself deeply in the literature you wish to contribute, ask new interesting questions, and understand that there is no overnight success, as science builds cumulative knowledge. To contribute to society in a meaningful way is a dedication of the heart and mind to one’s area of study, a willingness to test your own beliefs, to challenge yourself to continue to grow, and to always strive for a greater contribution than the last one you made. And, never defend do death something just because you wrote it. Let theory development and new data speak.