What an Ideal Leader Should (and Shouldn’t) Be Like: Gendered Prescriptions and Proscriptions for Leaders

Abstract

We investigated agency and communality trade-offs in ideal leader norms, and whether these trade-offs vary with gendered workplace cues (leader gender and staff gender composition). Descriptive leader norms (what leaders are typically like) generally mirror descriptive stereotypes of men, both positive and negative. Given that leadership ideals are aspirational, they may complement rather than mirror descriptive stereotypes of men. However, gendered prescriptions and proscriptions for leaders (what leaders should and should not be like) remain underexamined, and previous findings on this topic are mixed. In two preregistered experiments on perceptions of ideal leaders (N = 1,342), one aspect of agency (competence) was prioritized over communality, whereas another aspect (assertiveness) was not. Negative agency traits (e.g., “arrogant”) were strongly proscribed. Thus, unlike descriptive leader norms, our findings indicate that ideal leader norms are androgynous. These norms downplay negative masculine stereotypes (mirroring feminine proscriptions) and emphasize communality and assertiveness similarly. These trade-offs varied based on contextual gendered cues and participant characteristics, but ideal leader norms were similar for men and women leaders. One implication is that a focus on what leaders ideally should be like may bring to the forefront the relevance of women-typed attributes. This shift in emphasis may help highlight the value of communal traits, potentially reducing barriers for women in leadership. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843251349694