What I’ve learned from doing it differently

I have always put my hand up. Early in my career, when something was broken and no one wanted to own it, I stepped in. When a leader needed someone to take something difficult off their plate, I said yes. When I thought I was ready for the next level, I said so (sometimes clearly and sometimes softly). I am where I am partly because of that. Leaders trust people who get the work done and are honest about wanting to grow. That combination is rarer than it should be. So I am not writing this from the position of someone who suppressed her ambition. I am writing it from the position of someone who watched, up close, how many talented women around me did, and who understood exactly why.

Because the thing about voicing ambition is that it carries a different weight depending on who is speaking. I have seen women say almost exactly what I said, in almost exactly the same room, and be heard differently. Too direct. Too soon. Not quite the right moment. The ambition was identical. The reception was not.

The ambition gap is not about what women want. It is about what the system makes them pay for wanting it out loud.

What the data says

McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2024 report confirms what most women leaders already suspect: women start their careers just as ambitious as men. That does not change. What changes is the calculation. By mid-career, women have accumulated enough evidence (passed-over promotions, unattributed work, the way they have watched peers ahead of them be treated) to understand that ambition carries a cost for them that it does not for their male colleagues.

Catalyst’s double bind research is blunter: women who appear highly ambitious are rated as more competent and less likeable. Women who appear warm and collaborative are rated as likeable and less competent for senior roles. There is no winning combination. So many women stop playing that particular game altogether. They do not stop wanting. They stop showing it.

The system does not kill women’s ambition. It teaches them to keep it somewhere quieter.

The three ways women edit their ambition

In my coaching work with women leaders, I see the same patterns repeat. The editing of ambition is not random. It takes three predictable forms.

1. The qualification habit

Every statement of ambition gets wrapped in softeners. ‘I’d love to at some point…’ ‘When the time is right…’ ‘I’m open to it, if the opportunity comes up…’ None of these are lies. But they are not the truth either. They are the truth with the ambition smoothed over. The qualification habit exists to pre-empt the likability penalty. If you sound like you’re not too attached to the outcome, you can’t be called aggressive or entitled when it doesn’t happen. The cost is that you also make it almost impossible for sponsors and decision-makers to understand what you actually want and to advocate for you accordingly.

2. The worthiness test

Ambition becomes conditional: I will want this once I am ready for it. Once I have one more qualification. Once the team is in a better place. Once I have done this role for two more years. The worthiness test is a moving standard. Women apply it to themselves in ways that men rarely do. Research from KPMG consistently finds that women are more likely to self-select out of opportunities they are qualified for because they do not feel ‘completely ready.’ The worthiness test feels like diligence. It is actually a mechanism for deferring ambition indefinitely. There is always one more thing to achieve before the wanting becomes legitimate.

3. The reframe

Ambition gets translated into something safer. ‘I want to make a bigger impact’ instead of ‘I want to run this function.’ ‘I’d like more opportunities to develop’ instead of ‘I want to be considered for the board.’ The reframe disguises the specific, accountable ambition as something more safe and less threateningly direct. The problem with the reframe is not that it is dishonest. It is that it gives the people who need to understand your goals no clear target to aim at. You cannot sponsor someone effectively if you do not know exactly what they are trying to achieve.

You cannot sponsor someone effectively if you do not know exactly what they are trying to achieve. Ambition edited into vagueness cannot be championed.

What ambition actually is

Ambition is not ego. It is the recognition that you have something specific to contribute at a level you are not yet operating at. It is a bet on your own potential. Two things worth separating: wanting more and deserving more. You do not need to have already earned the seat to want it. Wanting it is what drives the work. And naming what you want, clearly, to the people who can help you get there is not arrogance. It is strategy. The difference between the two is the work behind the ask.

Reflection prompt

Think about the last time someone asked what you wanted from your career. What did you say? What did you leave out? And what were you protecting yourself from by leaving it out?

Try this

  • Write down, somewhere no one else will read it, exactly what you want. Not what’s reasonable, not what you could defend in a performance review, but the real version.
  • Name the role, the level, the type of influence. Be specific enough that it makes you uncomfortable to read back.
  • Then identify one person who should know this: a sponsor, a manager, someone with pull who currently does not have enough information to advocate for you. That conversation is what this exercise is building toward.

Coaching corner

The question I ask clients who know what they want and are not saying it:

“If someone with your exact CV, your results, and your skills were sitting across from you and they were a man, would you expect them to ask for this? So what are you waiting for?”

The women who move are the ones who stop waiting for the system to notice what they deserve and start making their ambition specific, visible, and impossible to overlook. That is not aggression. That is leadership.

A few reads worth your time on this topic

  • Women Don’t Ask by Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever. Women ask for less not because they want less but because they have correctly understood the cost. The research is two decades old but remains relevant.
  • The Double Bind, from Catalyst’s research series. Not a book, but research worth reading at catalyst.org. The clearest analytical lens I know for understanding why talented women stall at the level below where their ability should take them.
  • Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. The chapters on self-editing and taking up space are another story: precise, uncomfortable, and worth your time.