Gender bias can influence how supervisors view a leader’s long-term potential, a new study shows.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Minnesota, we (CCL researchers Phillip Braddy and John Fleenor) examined the effects of leader derailment where seemingly up-and-coming leaders get fired, demoted, or don’t advance as expected. We found that supervisors can have subtle, even subconscious differences in expectations for the behavior of male and female leaders, which can have costly consequences for women in the workplace, most notably the loss of mentorship.

To examine gender bias in perceptions of derailment potential, we conducted four studies. Two studies analyzed data collected on nearly 50,000 leaders enrolled in leadership development programs offered by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and another provider. The other two studies were experimental investigations where participants examined performance reviews of two fictitious employees whose only difference was their gender.

We found that when evaluating leaders who exhibited equal levels of ineffective interpersonal behaviors, supervisors were more likely to predict derailment potential for women leaders than for men. Because of these negative assessments, female leaders receive less mentoring — a benefit that is especially important for female advancement in the workplace.

According to our lead author Joyce Bono, a management professor at the University of Florida, “Sponsorship and mentoring are even more important for women than men because women are typically are less connected to those higher in the corporate hierarchy in part because there are more men than women at higher levels.”

However, the negative evaluations female leaders receive from male supervisors are not purposeful or nefarious. It’s not that male supervisors don’t want women to get ahead. Rather, women are expected to be nicer than men because of societal expectations. In this study, these beliefs likely influenced the behaviors of the male supervisors without their awareness.

We advise that top executives – not only HR professionals – be especially attentive to the mentoring and sponsorship of female leaders. These executives need to catch themselves and their colleagues’ biases, and work together with HR to reduce their negative effects on the mentorship and advancement of women.

The study, “Dropped on the Way to the Top: Gender and Managerial Derailment,” appears in the journal, Personnel Psychology.