Women leaders show wider gap between self-rating and feedback
Analysis of 2,120 leadership assessments found a wider gap for women between self-ratings and feedback from colleagues.
Women leaders show a wider gap than men between how they rate themselves and how others assess their leadership, according to an analysis of more than 2,000 360-degree feedback assessments.
Employee experience consultancy People Insight analysed 2,120 completed assessments across 105 client organisations. Each participant completed a self-assessment and received feedback from at least one other rater group, with scores measured on a 1–6 frequency-based scale.
Women and men gave themselves broadly similar ratings, while women received slightly higher ratings from others. Both groups tended to rate themselves below the scores they received from others, but the gap was wider among women.
The pattern appeared across every leadership competency measured, including development, strategy, influencing, performance, agility, engagement and integrity. People Insight identified particularly notable gaps in development, strategy, influencing, performance and agility.
Ratings also differed according to who provided the feedback. Among senior leaders, direct reports and other stakeholders tended to rate leaders more positively than leaders rated themselves, while line-manager ratings were closer to leaders' self-assessments.
People Insight said organisations should draw on feedback from a wider range of colleagues when developing leaders rather than relying principally on the line manager's perspective. It also recommended making evidence of strengths a more explicit part of 360 feedback and development conversations.
Tom Debenham, managing director at People Insight, said: ‘So many women are already having a stronger impact than they realise, but bringing this down to confidence alone isn’t good enough. Organisations need to help leaders recognise their strengths, trust the evidence and use those strengths more deliberately.’
The analysis does not establish why women showed a wider gap between self-assessment and external feedback. People Insight cautioned against interpreting the results simply as evidence that women lack confidence.
It said conservative self-ratings could reflect higher personal standards, reflection or an emphasis on continuous improvement. The report also acknowledges another possible explanation for the wider self-other gaps across the sample: people providing feedback may be more generous in their assessments of others than leaders are when assessing themselves.
The consultancy said the findings have implications for leadership development, particularly where 360-degree feedback is used to identify weaknesses or development needs. Strengths recognised consistently by colleagues could also inform coaching, development and progression decisions.
The report does not publish the mean scores for women and men or quantify the size of the differences described as ‘slightly’ higher external ratings and a ‘notably’ wider self-other gap. It therefore does not establish the practical magnitude of the gender difference.
People Insight published the analysis on 18 August.
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Women leaders and the self-perception gap