Women in leadership: own the table

Women remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions because advancement is shaped by systems as well as individual performance. Today, there are still many systemic challenges and inequities.

These barriers include unequal access to early promotions, lack of sponsorship, influential networks that might not be open to other women, and fewer opportunities for visible assignments and senior decision-making. Bias and different expectations around what a woman in leadership should be, such as being very communal, also affect career progression. Offering flexibility in jobs, roles, and schedules can help.

The first promotion into management remains particularly important. Existing research from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey continues to identify this “broken rung” as a major barrier to gender parity in leadership. The first promotion already represents a challenge: because fewer women get that first step, fewer women are available for every level above.

The issue becomes more difficult when systems tell women to simply become more confident, when in reality, a lot of the inequalities are in the system. Organizations need fair promotion systems and equal access to career-building opportunities. Women also benefit from understanding how influence, visibility, networks, and sponsorship affect their advancement.

There are biases in evaluations and double-bind challenges: a woman seen as assertive can be judged as difficult, while a woman seen as warm can be judged as not strong enough.

There is also less sponsorship. Women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. Mentors talk to professionals, but sponsors talk about the professional behind closed doors. These sponsorship opportunities are offered less often to women.

Finally, there are unequal care responsibilities at home and in the workplace. Women still bear most of the work at home, and that also poses challenges to developing a full career.

There is not necessarily an ambition gap, but there is a gap and a scarcity of opportunities, promotions, and sponsorship.

Ready to address the barriers holding women back in your organization? Talk to Gabriela Mueller about turning those challenges into action. She has been working with women in over 80 countries for more than two decades. She has written extensively about the challenges women face. If you are interested, please reach out. Let's talk.

Organizations should manage women's advancement as a leadership and talent issue and a business imperative with measurable outcomes. In many cases, organizations need to stop trying to fix women and start fixing systems.

Here are some steps that have worked worldwide and demonstrated results in our work in leadership development and in sectors where we have dramatically increased the presence of women.

Fix the first promotion. Organizations need to track who reaches the first management level and hold leaders accountable for just, fair, and transparent promotion outcomes.

Make evaluations structured. Use clear, transparent data and criteria, ask the same questions for every candidate, and base ratings on evidence. Women today receive more ambiguous feedback, which makes it harder to prove their readiness for the next level.

Define potential explicitly. Undefined potential tends to favor people who look like current leaders.

Build sponsorship with accountability. Senior leaders should be responsible for moving specific talented women forward, with measurable KPIs and goals. Sponsorship means not only training and mentoring women but also speaking strategically about them behind closed doors, where promotion conversations are being held.

Give women high-visibility and high-stakes assignments. These include roles with P&L responsibility and leading major projects that increase visibility for promotion.

Measure and publish data. Look at promotion rates, pay gaps, and attrition by gender, and use the power of these numbers to improve results.

Finally, make flexibility normal for everyone. When only women use it, it becomes a career penalty. Also invite men to use flexible work arrangements to share responsibilities at home and build more just partnerships.

Looking to strengthen your pipeline of women leaders? Explore how Gabriela Mueller can support your organization through leadership development, coaching, and training.

When a person reaches burnout, it rarely comes from ambition. It mostly comes from saying yes to too many things or to everything. Choosing wisely between responsibilities and roles, considering recognition, and integrating work and life are key. Here are some steps to consider.

Choose work that gets noticed. Many women carry invisible tasks like organizing, fixing, and supporting. Research shows that these non-promotable tasks fall disproportionately on women. Protecting women's time for strategic work and decision-making is key.

Build a sponsor network, not just the workload. Promotions come from people advocating for you, not from working longer hours. Be strategic.

Decide your non-negotiables first. Values, family dinners, exercise, or sleep: put them on the calendar before you fill it up, because you will not have time to carve out later.

Delegate early. Senior leaders are valuable for their judgment, not just their availability. Let your team grow and use a model like the Blanchard model to delegate wisely.

Notice the warning signs. Constant exhaustion, cynicism, loss of energy, apathy, and losing joy in things you love are signs, not weaknesses. These are moments when you really need to step up.

Remember that a career is long. You can have everything that matters, just not at the same time. Want to advance without saying yes to everything? Talk to Gabriela Mueller about coaching that connects your career ambitions with what matters in your life.

Some of the most important parts of a woman's career come from making excellent use of sponsorship. Mentorship and coaching also add value: a mentor advises and teaches you, a coach develops you, and a sponsor advocates for you. A sponsor speaks positively about you in rooms where you are not present and where decisions are being discussed.

Women benefit from all three at different stages of their careers. However, sponsorship becomes particularly important for advancing to the next level because sponsors have organizational power and influence and can actively accelerate somebody's career.

Research from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey found that employees with sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate of employees without sponsors. The research is clear on one point: women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. Many women have excellent mentors and still get passed over for promotions because nobody with the right power was advocating for or endorsing them in those discussions.

If you have to choose one for promotion, choose sponsorship. The best career, however, uses all three: the wisdom of a mentor, the growth that comes from coaching, and the opportunities that come from sponsorship.

Sponsorship is earned. Sponsors invest their social capital in people they know can deliver strong results. Women need to make their work and ambitions visible strategically. Sponsors need to understand those ambitions and communicate them wisely to senior stakeholders and other levels of the organization.

Which support would make the biggest difference at your next career stage or for your teams? Explore your options with Gabriela Mueller.

Visibility and developing influence are key for any woman wanting a seat at key decision-making tables and more power in organizations. Visibility is not about flattery, pointless showing off, or bragging. It's about making contributions and business value visible to people who make decisions.

Excellent work does not speak for itself. Many women were taught it would, and it cost them. Here are some of the steps we recommend in live and online training for women to gain these key abilities.

Talk about impact, not just effort. Instead of saying, “I worked hard on this,” say, “I saved X amount of time, money, or effort.” Quantify and qualify achievements.

Share your ambitions explicitly. Decision-makers cannot support goals they don't know about. They are not mind readers, so those ambitions and goals need to be communicated clearly.

Build relationships up and across the matrix. Build relationships not only with your own team or those hierarchically above you. Influence depends largely on the width and depth of your network long before a decision is made. Invest in your network, because when you need one, it's too late to build it.

Speak up early in meetings. The first contributions often shape the discussion. Don't wait to be approached. Be vocal about what you want and your ideas.

Amplify other women. Women who support women build stronger networks and support each other's career. Ready to make your contributions visible and strengthen your influence? Explore coaching and training with Gabriela Mueller's programs.