Women mayors say what it takes to lead: setting theory against lived experience Available to Purchase

Leadership theorists have attempted over the years to encapsulate the mystique, the magic ingredient of what makes leadership successful into a formula or model. The most widely‐held view of leadership during the 1980s and 1990s seems to be that derived from Burns’ work in 1978, which contrasts “transforming” leadership with “transactional” leadership. To explore the relationship between gender, success as a mayor in local government leadership and Burns’ theory, New Zealand’s women mayors were interviewed about their perceptions of leadership and their responses were linked to the concept of transforming leadership. The results suggest that women mayors do judge success as a leader in terms that are closely allied to transformational rather than transactional leadership.