When Qualified Women Resist the Leader Label

Sarah, a manager in a bustling tech company, consistently delivers top results. Her team outperforms others, her strategic insights drive innovation, and her emotional intelligence allows her to easily navigate complex stakeholder relationships. By all measures, Sarah is an exemplary leader. Yet, when asked if she sees herself as a leader, Sarah hesitates. “I’m just doing my job,” she says with a shrug.

Sarah is not alone. Indeed, research reveals a startling disconnect: Although women often outperform men in leadership effectiveness, they are less likely to identify as leaders. This isn’t just about modesty or impostor syndrome; it’s an invisible misalignment between competence and identity that powerfully skews the leadership landscape. Seeing oneself as a leader is often a preliminary step to being seen as a leader by others, yet this identification process is more fraught for women than for men, particularly in the workplace.

The gulf between what women are capable of and how they see themselves raises critical questions: Why do highly competent women shy away from the “leader” label? How does this reluctance affect their career trajectories and organizational outcomes? And, most importantly, how can companies bridge this identity gap to take full advantage of their leadership talent pools?

The Leader-Identity/Competence Paradox

A comprehensive analysis of leadership effectiveness by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman provides compelling evidence of women’s leadership capabilities. Their study, which examined data from over 60,000 leaders through 360-degree reviews, found that women outperformed men in 17 out of 19 key leadership competencies, including taking initiative, developing new capabilities, displaying high integrity and honesty, driving results, developing others, inspiring and motivating others, building relationships, collaborating and working effectively in teams, establishing stretch goals, and championing change. Women particularly excelled at self-development, integrity, and at taking initiative.

Our research reveals that despite those findings, women are consistently less comfortable than men in applying the label “leader” to themselves. Data we recently collected in a University of Michigan survey of 275 full-time working adults quantifies this disparity. The study defined “strong leader identity” as scoring an average of 6 or higher on a 7-point scale across four leader-identity questions.