The circle that narrows as she rises

In October I am speaking on a panel in Ljubljana, at the BPW AdriONNet Forum. The title is this: “Lonely at the top?”

Preparing for it, I realised that for years we have been doing the same thing, counting women. How many on the Board, how many in the executive team, how many reached the top. This time I asked myself a different question. Not how many arrive, but what happened to them once they did.

Getting to the top is one story. Standing there is another.

The higher she rises, the smaller the circle

Look at Europe’s largest listed companies. Around 40% of non-executive Board members are women. That is real progress, and we should say so. But watch what happens as we move towards executive power.

Every step closer to real decision-making narrows the circle a little further. And it does not begin at the top, it begins at the very first promotion. Keep that word in mind, circle. I will come back to it.

The performance question is settled

The obvious question comes first: is she simply less effective? The largest review we have answers it. A meta-analysis published in 2024, covering 50 years of research, shows that where gender differences appear, women are rated higher than men on most of the leadership behaviours linked to effectiveness. The decisive ones and the collaborative ones alike. Men are ahead on exactly one behaviour, passive management. Waiting for something to go wrong. And yet fewer than one in ten chief executives is a woman.

So the question is not how she leads. It is what happens around her while she does.

The same behaviour, a different reading

So what happens around her? The same behaviour is read from two different perspectives. Assertive: confident, or aggressive. Decisive: a strong leader, or controlling. Ambitious: driven, or too much.

What explains this best, I think, is role congruity theory. What we expect from a good leader and what we expect from a good woman are not always described in the same words, and stepping outside that expectation can carry a social penalty. This is not only theory. A 2024 study analysed hundreds of thousands of political remarks; when women leaders used dominant language they were portrayed as commanding but cold. And that penalty fell hardest on Black and Latina leaders. Let me be clear, leadership is demanding for everyone. But gender has changed the rules of interpretation!

I call this the leadership tax

Around 40% of senior women are the only woman, or one of the only women, in the room. They are about 2.5 times more likely to be interrupted, to have their judgement questioned, to be mistaken for someone more junior. And three times more likely to think regularly about leaving. Underneath those numbers there is invisible work. The only woman in the room does her job and, at the same time, calculates how that job will be read. I call this the leadership tax.

This is not the kind of tax you pay in money! It is paid by rehearsing a sentence in your head before you say it. By choosing the tone of your voice, by deciding whether to say the same sentence a second time after being interrupted, by those few extra minutes before you walk into the meeting. One by one they all look small. Add them up at the bottom of the page and it is another matter.

This tax has no line in any budget. Nobody sees it, because once it is paid the work has been done anyway. The only thing anyone sees is that the work got done.

If you constantly have to manage how you are perceived, how much room is left simply to lead?

One more thing. Most of the time, the person paying this tax cannot lower it. The rate is set by the room. A chair who gives the floor back to someone who was interrupted lowers the rate in that room. So does a team that turns to the person who said it first when they hear the same idea a second time. This is why “be a little more confident” is advice that does not go far at this table. A word to one person does not settle an account the room has drawn up.

The top is lonely for everyone, but not in the same way

So yes, the data shows that the top is lonely for everyone. But look at the same level and the experience is not the same. Leadership can be lonely for anyone; being the only one makes that loneliness structural.

A network is not a connection

So what actually protects her? Not more contacts. A network tells you who knows you. A connection is the person you can be honest with. About the doubt, about the pressure, about the decision you are not sure of.

And I found the evidence for it. In a study of 4.5 million emails, the women who moved into leadership had two things: a central network and a close circle of other women. For men, the composition of the network made no such difference. There is a related gap. A mentor talks to you; a sponsor talks about you when you are not in the room. Women are often well mentored and under-sponsored 😊

Advice travels and has its effect. Advocacy cannot travel.

Monday morning

Connection cannot be improvised on the day she is appointed, it has to be designed earlier. There are three things you can start on Monday morning.

None of this requires a new budget line. All of it comes down to a single decision!

Does it work? In a field experiment with more than 2,000 people, simply making the organisation’s commitment explicit raised women’s leadership aspirations by about 11%. Because now they could expect sponsorship.

A last word

Let me close where I began. For years we have asked how many women reach the top. The better question is this: who is there to meet her when she arrives?

Representation puts a woman in the room. Connection is what lets her stay, and lead.

Let us make sure that women who reach the top never have to stand there alone. That is measured not by how many of them made it, but by who is standing beside them when they do…