Article
The Power of True Versatile Leadership
Leadership diversity, particularly the balance of personality traits traditionally labelled masculine and feminine, has a real impact on organisational success. Research from Master International A/S, led by Lise Sustmann Allen and Solja K. Klargaard, shows that as women advance into top leadership, their personality profiles often narrow to resemble those of male leaders more closely, potentially limiting organisational innovation and resilience.
Here's what you'll get from this article:
- Key data on the gender gap in senior leadership and board representation.
- The eight-trait framework behind versatile leadership.
- Concrete, step-by-step actions for closing the gap in your own organisation.
Key Insights from OPTO Data
Despite similar educational achievement, women hold only 23.3% of board seats, just 8.4% of board chair positions, and a mere 6% of CEO roles globally. Data from Master International A/S shows that personality trait imbalances extend beyond gender representation itself.
Versatile Leadership Framework
The research identifies eight critical traits, split into two groups. The managerial aspects, assertiveness, drive, ingenuity and confidence, emphasise decisiveness and short-term results. The complementary aspects, altruism, stability, sincerity and trust, promote inclusivity and long-term engagement. True versatile leadership combines both groups: assertiveness with altruism, drive with stability, confidence with sincerity, and ingenuity with trust. Leaders who combine these pairs show stronger adaptability across complex challenges.
Gender Patterns in Leadership Profiles
As women advance professionally, their scores on the complementary aspects often decline, while men's scores tend to stay stable. This suggests that current promotion processes may unintentionally narrow the range of leadership styles found at senior levels, an effect the researchers describe as a convergence problem.
Androgynous Leadership: A Necessity and a Challenge
Closing this gap isn't just a gender equity question, it's an organisational resilience question. A leadership layer with a narrower range of traits is, by definition, less equipped to handle a wide range of challenges.
Avoid Linking Traits to Gender Stereotypes
The traits behind versatile leadership, assertiveness, altruism, drive, stability, confidence, sincerity, ingenuity and trust, are not "male" or "female" traits. Treating them as gendered is itself part of what narrows leadership profiles as people are promoted.
Step by Step: How to Achieve Versatile Leadership
1. Implement Structural Policies
Support balanced leadership representation through policy, not just intention.
2. Strengthen Sponsorship Programmes
Go beyond mentorship into active advocacy.
3. Redefine Traits as Gender-Neutral
Change how traits are described and assessed.
4. Promote Versatile Leadership
Make it the organisational benchmark for good leadership, not a side conversation.
Conclusion
Embedding versatile leadership into development and talent strategy lets organisations close gender gaps while building more resilient, innovative teams, better equipped to navigate complexity.
Note: the Danish version of this page runs to roughly 8,500-9,000 words, with a full methodology section, statistical tables (including Cohen's d effect sizes) and a reference list. The content above is a faithful, condensed adaptation of the core findings and framework, not a word-for-word translation. Pull the methodology, exact figures and references directly from the English PDF if you want this page to match the Danish version's depth.
Download the full PDF: The Power of True Versatile Leadership