News from Leaders By Design

I’ve spent decades watching talented senior women second-guess themselves into strategic paralysis — not because they lacked confidence, but because the rules are stacked against them. In this post, I name the traps, share strategies I’ve found effective, and offer a more useful reframe than trying to please everyone in the room.

Executive meetings have an architecture — one built over decades around the communication norms of male-dominated hierarchies. The rules are largely unwritten. But they are real. And they systematically disadvantage the way many senior women naturally communicate. Women who consistently get heard in high-stakes rooms aren’t louder or more aggressive. They’re more strategically positioned.