This is not a grievance. It is a strategic observation, and I want to make it carefully, because it changes where your energy should go.
The leadership competency frameworks most large organisations still use were built in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly by studying the successful male executives already in post. The behaviours they codified, decisive action, competitive drive, commanding presence, described what authority looked like in companies designed by and for men. The frameworks have been revised and softened many times since. The architecture underneath has not moved much.
The double bind, made structural
You already know the double bind from living it: act with the assertiveness the role demands and you are difficult; lead with warmth and you are not ready for the hard calls. Decades of research document it, but you did not need the research.
What gets discussed less is that the double bind is not only in people’s heads. It is written into the assessment language itself. When a promotion framework asks for “executive gravitas” or “commanding presence”, it is encoding one cultural template of authority, and every panel that uses those words scores you against that template whether it means to or not.
I spent a decade on the hiring side, in the rooms where those words get used. Nobody in them thought of themselves as biased. They did not have to be. The words did the work for them.
Meeting the signal without performing the template
If the system was not built for you, you have two options. Conform to it completely, which is exhausting and costs you the distinctiveness that got you this far. Or understand it precisely and choose your adaptations on purpose.
Choosing on purpose looks like this. Take the expectation hiding behind “commanding presence”. The panel does not actually need volume from you. It needs to believe that when things go wrong, you will hold. That belief can be built without performing dominance: state your position early in the meeting instead of waiting to be invited; when you are challenged, slow your answer down rather than speeding it up; put a number and a date on the things you own, out loud. Same signal, your delivery.
Not every expectation deserves that treatment. Some are worth meeting exactly as written, because they are the real job: carrying a budget, owning a decision that might be wrong, saying the uncomfortable thing to the room. Part of the work is telling those two categories apart, and it is easier to do with the framework in front of you. Ask for it. Most companies will simply send you the document, and most people never ask.
This is most of what my coaching is. Not changing who a client is. Showing her exactly what her organisation’s version of the template rewards, which parts to meet as written, which parts to meet in her own delivery, and how to tell the difference.