Summary: With more than half of women feeling less motivated to pursue a promotion, it’s time to redefine what strong leadership looks like. This means exploring if the senior roles you’re offering are genuinely well-designed.
More than half (54 per cent) of female professionals say they feel less motivated to go for a promotion than they did two years ago.
Meanwhile, 81 per cent feel disadvantaged in the process compared with male colleagues, according to recent research by recruitment agency Robert Walters.
Yet the real question isn’t around why women lack ambition, but whether the roles themselves are fit for purpose.
This issue reveals a deeper problem in the C-suite: many women aren’t happy with the version of leadership they see around them. They simply don’t think the job is actually worth it.
And they’re not going to put their health at risk for a job that they can see is not sustainable.
Because you’re worth it
Women avoiding applying for senior roles is a symptom of a leadership culture problem in an organisation.
There’s been a lot of noise in recent years around getting women into leadership positions. But we’ve seen much less effort or thought going into shifting the culture that they are being expected to step into.
When leadership looks exhausting, emotionally draining and incompatible with wellbeing, people naturally begin questioning whether progression is worth the cost.
And that’s exactly what’s happened.
Too often, senior roles are still designed around outdated assumptions. In leadership, being constantly available, working long hours, absorbing pressure without limits and sacrificing your personal life are all seen as proof of commitment.
And when it backfires, how do organisations respond? By trying to ‘fix’ individuals through confidence building or resilience training, but without examining whether the role itself is sustainable.
This is toxic resilience. Instead, we need to think about sustainable resilience.
The real question isn’t around why women lack ambition, but whether the roles themselves are fit for purpose
Sustainable resilience
Too often, resilience gets interpreted as being able to cope with more, keeping going regardless or absorbing increasing pressure.
I’m interested in resilience as something more sustainable: Being able to adapt, perform well and navigate challenges without sacrificing your health or wellbeing.
Organisations can sometimes focus heavily on helping individuals become more resilient without asking whether the role, expectations or environment are sustainable in the first place.
But building resilience shouldn’t mean encouraging people to push through at any cost or ignore their limits. It also shouldn’t become shorthand for ‘this is yours to fix’. Different people need different approaches; there isn’t one right way to be resilient.
Sustainable resilience is as much about understanding your energy, capacity and boundaries as it is about mindset. Culture also matters, as psychological safety, leadership behaviours and how success is defined all influence how people can thrive.
Rethinking successful leadership
Ultimately, resilience should help people perform well over time, not simply tolerate unsustainable ways of working for longer.
Women aren’t rejecting leadership itself, just the version of leadership that they see around them. This is an issue that’s becoming more and more common in my coaching practice.
The answer is understanding that this isn’t about a lack of ambition, it’s a job architecture and leadership design problem.
There’s a growing disconnect between what organisations say they value, such as wellbeing, inclusion and flexibility, and what leaders actually require in practice.
But burnt out leadership cultures affect retention, succession planning, engagement and diversity at senior levels.
I’m not saying we should be lowering standards or trying to make leadership easier. But we should be designing roles which enable sustained high performance rather than chronic depletion.
If you want to retain strong leaders, you need to be willing to rethink what successful leadership looks like. And that means exploring if the senior roles you’re offering are genuinely well-designed.
Sustainable resilience is as much about understanding your energy, capacity and boundaries as it is about mindset
Five tips for better designing leadership roles
1. Refocus roles around sustainable performance
Take a good look at the role. Is it realistically achievable without chronic overwork? What responsibilities have accumulated over time that no longer belong there?
2. Stop rewarding exhaustion
Do promotions consistently go to people who are always online, constantly firefighting, visibly overworked and unable to disconnect?
If the answer is yes, this shows that the organisation is teaching employees that burnout is the price of progression.
3. Make flexibility visible at senior level
Employees need to see their leaders protecting boundaries, taking leave, working sustainably and leading effectively – but without constant availability.
4. Make it psychologically safe to talk about capacity
In many organisations, overwhelmed leaders feel that they can’t say: “This workload is unsustainable” or “This role has become too broad” or that there’s a need for clearer priorities.
Why can’t we normalise conversations about capacity without a stigma attached? This needs to happen long before burnout happens.
5 Lower unnecessary emotional overload
Many senior roles carry invisible labour, such as conflict management, emotional containment, people issues and constant context switching between talks – all of which is draining and not on the job spec.
Leaders need support structures, clearer priorities and realistic expectations to help them.
Future leadership
The future of leadership is unlikely to belong to the person who can absorb the most pressure for the longest.
It’s great to see a growing awareness around this, with people opting not to step up to the promotion, simply protect themselves. That’s a healthy, positive move for all of us.
It’s time to redefine what strong leadership looks like. For me, it should be about leaders who create clarity, sustain performance, manage their energy, lead people well and who can adapt through change.
And, most importantly, they need to model healthy ways of working for others.
By making sure senior roles are genuinely well-designed and sustainable, we can stop women asking themselves ‘is the job really worth it?’, and reverse the trend of promotion burnout.
Did you enjoy this article? Why not read: Burnout isn’t just a wellbeing issue, it’s a tribunal waiting to happen
