For more than 30 years, as a physician, a healthcare executive, and now an executive advisor, I’ve watched accomplished women lead by two sets of rules: the ones they were raised on, and the ones others use to judge their leadership. I help them see both clearly so they stop over-explaining decisions they’re qualified to make, hold their position under pushback, and lead with an ease they didn’t have before.
Lesson 3: The barrier you can actually move
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Two things can be true at once. Gender bias can be holding you back. And you can also be holding yourself back, in ways you don't see yet. The external barriers are real. Organizations promote confidence over competence. Women get promoted for what they've already proven. Repeatedly. Men get promoted for what someone assumes they'll do next. They call that potential. Is it fair? No. But when has life ever been fair? Here's the lesson: that external barrier isn't yours to solve alone. The internal one is, and it's where you have complete control. Here's how the internal barrier shows up in the women I work with. It sounds something like this: I worked my as$$ off to get where I am, and they still treat me like I don't deserve my seat at the table. How do I get them to believe I belong here? Here's the hard truth: they'll believe you belong there when you believe it. Not the part you know intellectually, the one based on your work and your results. That part isn't in question. I mean what your subconscious and your body believe about where you belong, which is a different system entirely. You haven't yet convinced your body it's safe at this level. Safe to be fully you here. So you stay guarded. You edit how you talk, how you lead, how much of yourself you let into the room. And guarded doesn't translate as “ready”. It reads as exactly what they suspected. Owning the room was never about the room. It's about what you believe about the value you bring into it, decided long before you sit down, and held in your body, not just your head. Fix what's yours. Let the rest wait for the fight it actually requires. Here's to the ground you can actually move, Denée PS: Where do you know you belong in your head, but your body isn't quite convinced yet? Hit reply and tell me. Denée Choice, MD, MMM |
Choice Leadership Consulting
For more than 30 years, as a physician, a healthcare executive, and now an executive advisor, I’ve watched accomplished women lead by two sets of rules: the ones they were raised on, and the ones others use to judge their leadership. I help them see both clearly so they stop over-explaining decisions they’re qualified to make, hold their position under pushback, and lead with an ease they didn’t have before.
A few days ago, I had a conversation with an accomplished woman physician who was negotiating a new leadership opportunity. She was being recruited to build a program from the ground up. She had the expertise, the experience, and a clear understanding of what it would take to succeed. She also knew what could go wrong. She'd been in a similar situation before, where the promised resources never materialized. This time, she was determined to do things differently. So she did what many highly...
I’ve noticed a pattern in how the women I work with develop over time. It usually doesn’t look dramatic from the outside. They’re still accomplished, thoughtful, and deeply committed to doing excellent work. But they stop leading like they have something left to prove. They start leading from a different place. They trust their judgment more. They spend less time wondering whether they’re ready and more time deciding what they think. They become more discerning about where their time,...
There’s a part of leadership that no one can see. It won’t show up on your résumé. It’s difficult to capture in a performance review. And you probably won’t find it listed among the competencies in your organization’s leadership model. But it shapes nearly everything people experience when they work with you. I think of it as the invisible architecture of leadership. We tend to think about leadership in terms of what we can observe. How you communicate. How you make decisions. How you...