While most companies have male CEOs and most leadership positions in the U.S. and abroad are held by men, the “CEO part of the brain” — the prefrontal cortex, which governs things like judgment, organization and planning — is actually stronger in women, suggesting that women, not men, are a better suited to hold positions of power and are probably better equipped to change our world than men.
This isn’t idle speculation. Research we have been conducting at the Amen Clinics over the past 22 years bears this out.
This bold statement comes from an article in Huffington Post written by David Amen, about why it’s time to let women take the leadership wheel in the world today! I recommend the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-amen-md/female-brain_b_2697024.html
Fascinating observation David makes: “Women showed significantly increased cerebral blood flow in 112 of the 128 regions of the brain we measured. Put simply, this means that women generally have more brain activity than men. But what fascinated me as a psychiatrist and brain imaging specialist wasn’t that women’s brains were much more active than men’s. I think a lot of us guys have known that for years. What I found particularly interesting were the specific areas of the brain that were more active in women — areas that show women may indeed be better equipped to lead our world toward meaningful change than men are.”
This question assumes that CEOs are selected based on competence, however that is frequently not the case. Social currency, bluff and blunder, and a host of other non-competence related factors can propel someone to the top. Much of the research I’ve seen suggests that women executives tend to undersell themselves and male executives tend to oversell what they can deliver. Boards like the sound of all of that huff and puff and so there you go. Finally, CEOs should be tracked and paid on retrospective 2 year performance rolling. It takes time to make quality changes in an organization, conversely it also take time to drive an organization over the cliff. This is why the first 6-12 months of an executive’s tenure are really based on the prior leaders work.
You are so right, Joni! 🙂