Andromachi Athanasopoulou, Amanda Moss Cowan, Michael Smets and Timothy Morris* say that asking female CEOs to explain their own success helped them develop recommendations for supporting women’s leadership.
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Women who have already made it to the top say the only person who will get you there is yourself.
While many researchers have examined the structural and other barriers that limit women’s progress through the ranks, we wanted to explore a different question: how have the few women who have made it to the very top overcome those barriers?
Our aim was to discover how female CEOs explain their own success, and to develop recommendations for supporting women’s leadership careers more generally.
We embarked on an in-depth study of the leadership journey of 12 female CEOs.
The following five recommendations emerged from the study as advice to women who want to lead.
- Own your ambition.
The critical factor in a woman achieving the top job is taking ownership of her ambition.
This starts with seeing herself as a leader, which is by no means as simple as it sounds.
Recognising the work–life compromises and barriers they would face meant our interviewees described themselves as “accepting” rather than “celebrating” their ambitions.
This is critical, because even once a woman has accepted her leadership potential, she may find it difficult to access formal development programs.
Our female CEOs described how self-acceptance unlocked their ability to take charge of their own development: seeking out stretch assignments, learning on the job, and learning from the people in their networks.
- Don’t wait to be asked.
Developing the confidence to proactively seek stretch assignments is another important step for women in accepting their potential for promotion.
All the CEOs we interviewed, both male and female, talked about women’s typically more careful approach to decision-making.
They associated this caution with a lack of confidence that was seen to spill over into women’s management of their careers.
As one male CEO told us, a woman he was talking to about career advice and said she wasn’t sure she had all the skills the job was looking for, so she didn’t know whether to apply.
“I said, that’s the last thing in the world you should be worried about, don’t take yourself out of something before you’re even in it,” he said.
The female CEOs we interviewed agreed.
They felt men started pushing for promotions much harder and faster than women.
Our CEOs urged women to ask for promotion even before they felt completely ready for the job.
This was not just a case of mirroring what they perceived to be successful male behaviour, but about being comfortable with uncertainty: “Comfort is not knowing everything that’s ahead of you [but having] enough breadth of experience and processing capability to be able to adapt.”
- Take charge of your personal and professional life.
The female leaders we spoke to expected little outside support, either at home or at work.
They took charge when confronted with work/family conflicts; and, faced with a lack of sponsorship compared with their male peers, they actively developed their own networks, and sought mentors when their organisation did not formally provide such opportunities.
Interestingly, they emphasised trying to develop networks that would help them to do their current job better, rather than to get a better job, which is typically how men employ networks.
- Focus on the long-term goal.
Both male and female CEOs were well aware of the difficult trade-offs involved with having children.
However, the women we interviewed were much more positive than the men about the consequences of stepping out of the workforce, pointing out that missing out on a few years in your career is not critical as long as they plan accordingly.
Maybe some of your peers will have got ahead of you temporarily, but there is time to catch up.
Organisations can support this long-term outlook by changing policies to allow women the space and time to manage raising a family, and creating ways for women to remain engaged in the life of the workplace even while on leave.
- Embrace a well-rounded leadership style.
Much has been written about perceived gender differences in leadership styles.
Where women are successful, it is thought that they have adopted an androgynous or even masculine leadership style.
Our research calls that into question.
There is a strong transformational theme in how our female CEOs lead others.
They use nurturing and communicative behaviour, seen as stereotypically feminine, as well as role modelling.
However, we found that as part of their self-development they concentrated on developing leadership skills and behaviours that are usually thought of as stereotypically masculine — such as seeing the big picture, developing vision, and honing other strategic capabilities.
They treated these as additional and complementary to the stereotypically female transformational style which came most naturally to them.
That is, they neither attempted to mimic a “male” leadership style nor presented themselves as “female” leaders, but created a rounded and distinctive blend of leadership skills and behaviours that put the feminine first.
The biggest challenge for women with leadership aspirations remains that first step: recognising and accepting their own ambition, and being prepared to make the trade-offs that come with it.
In that, they can take heart from the female CEOs we interviewed, who were clear that the challenges, though real, were not insurmountable.
However, the men we interviewed continued to see taking time out of the workplace as a concern, and even fretted about the best age for a woman to have children.
If this is still the dominant message, then it is no wonder that some potential women leaders are falling at the first fence.
* Andromachi Athanasopoulou is an Assistant Professor in Organisational Behaviour at the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London and an Associate Fellow in Executive Education at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
Amanda Moss Cowan is Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Rhode Island College of Business Administration and a Research Associate with Saïd Business School.
Michael Smets is Associate Professor in Management and Organisation Studies at Saïd Business School and a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford.
Timothy Morris is Professor of Management Studies at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
This article first appeared at hbr.org.
