Are Women Visionary?

Knowing my interest in women’s leadership development, Jeff Garrison, of JCG Consulting, recently sent me an article that appeared in the January 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review. The title of the article, Women and the Vision Thing, looked at a survey that found that as a group, women scored higher than men in many areas of leadership. The one critical area where they did not score as well was in the area of “envisioning – the ability to recognize new opportunities and trends in the environment and develop a new strategic direction for an enterprise.”

The article offered three possible reasons for this, but it’s the first I’d like you to consider today: the idea that women may use a different process than men for shaping the future. In other words, maybe we’re not recognizing a woman’s ability to be a visionary, because “visionary” doesn’t look the way we are used to seeing it.

If a woman’s process is to bring together her entire team to strategically plan for the future, is she less visionary because she includes the entire team?

I’ve written before about how a different way of leading doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong way of leading. It’s important to look at results to see whether a method is “wrong” or simply different. If a department headed by a woman is thriving, growing, and moving forward, how can it be said that she is not visionary, even if she credits her team with working well together to achieve results?

What does a visionary leader look like?