Crisis leadership reimagined: Virtues-language and the Shift from masculinized to inclusive approaches

Crisis leadership is typically constructed as a manly endeavor, both in popular culture and much research. These accounts celebrate and reinforce a crisis leader prototype that emphasizes manliness, toughness, dominance, risk-taking, and vengeance as key to leading through crisis. Because women and attributes associated with femininity are incongruent with this prototype, its influence impedes women’s leadership. Further, by preferencing behaviors associated with masculinity, rather than embracing the best of human attributes, the prevailing crisis leadership prototype offers limited insights into what ethical and effective crisis leadership entails. To address these concerns, we examine the crisis communication of 12 women Heads-of-Government, focusing on their use of virtues-based language. Processes of socialization make women less likely to reproduce prototypically masculinized approaches to crisis leadership. Analyzing these leaders’ virtues-based language during the first wave of COVID-19 informs our theorizing of the role of such messaging in leaders’ crisis communications. Our findings reveal virtues-based crisis leadership language practices that can be adopted by leaders of any gender. We propose such an approach can help leaders transcend the amoral and masculinized crisis leader prototype and provide a reimagined approach to crisis leadership that centers ethical considerations.