Why Humanity Is the Leadership Advantage When the Rules Change
How women leaders can embrace authenticity, empathy, and humanity to redefine power and create lasting impact.
“You’re great, but…”
Most women in leadership have encountered that sentence, whether stated directly or conveyed through subtle, coded feedback.
You’re great, but you’re too emotional.
You’re great, but you’re too direct.
You’re great, but you smile too much.
That “but” shapes careers. It influences who is perceived as leadership material and who gradually learns to take up less space.
Much of contemporary leadership advice was not developed with women in mind. It is grounded in norms that value emotional distance, stoicism, and endurance—traits historically linked to (mostly white, cisgender male) authority. Empathy, warmth, and emotional intelligence have often been framed as risks rather than strengths.
Yet real-world experience frequently challenges these outdated models of power. Many women eventually learn—through experience, disruption, or crisis—that what makes us human is not the opposite of strength. It is its source.
When Feedback Is Really About Conformity
Early in my legal career, a performance review included a line I will never forget: “Too happy. Smiles too much.” It was not feedback about my work. It was feedback about conformity.
Research confirms what many women intuitively understand: women are more likely than men to receive personality-based feedback that is largely unrelated to effectiveness and disproportionately pressures them to conform to gendered expectations of leadership behavior.¹
This kind of feedback rarely improves performance. Instead, it teaches women to self-edit—to suppress the very qualities that often make them effective leaders. That realization led me to a decision I have never regretted: I would not diminish the aspects of myself that made me effective simply to make others more comfortable.
Being Excellent—and Still Unsupported
Later, in my first in-house leadership role, I was told I cared “too much” about Legal and not enough about the business. Yet my team was high-performing, deeply engaged, and trusted my leadership. The issue was not competence. It was my willingness to challenge accepted norms—particularly around ethics, risk, and long-term trust.
When organizational leadership changed, so did the tolerance for questioning, especially from a woman who led with transparency and conviction.
This pattern is well documented. Studies show that women leaders who challenge norms or raise ethical concerns are more likely to be perceived as difficult or disruptive, even when their concerns are well-founded.²
That was when I learned an essential leadership lesson: it is possible to be right and still be in the wrong room. Leaving was not a failure. It was an act of discernment. Not every organization deserves your leadership.
When the Rules Change in Your Body
Leadership is not tested only in boardrooms.
I have survived multiple life-threatening medical events, including emergency childbirth complications and, later, multiple pulmonary embolisms that left me disabled for months, the aftermath of which I am still navigating years later. Those experiences dismantled the illusion that resilience is built solely through endurance. Healing did not come from pushing harder—it came from safety, support, and self-compassion.
Neuroscience and trauma research affirm this principle: psychological safety is foundational to recovery, cognitive function, and sustainable performance.³ The same conditions that allow bodies to heal are the conditions that allow teams to thrive.
Empathy Is Not a Weakness—It Is a Multiplier
When I returned to leadership after trauma, colleagues told me I seemed stronger. What they meant was that I was more human.
Empathy did not weaken my authority; it sharpened it.
Empirical research supports this shift. Leaders who prioritize empathy and psychological safety see higher engagement, stronger retention, increased innovation, and better decision-making across teams.⁴ People do not do their best work when they are afraid. They do their best work when they feel safe enough to tell the truth.
Empathy anticipates problems before they escalate. It builds trust faster than hierarchy. It allows people to contribute their full intelligence rather than mere compliance. This is not softness. It is strategic leadership.
Authenticity Is Alignment, Not Oversharing
Authenticity is often misunderstood. It is not oversharing. It is not a lack of boundaries. It is not emotional dumping.
Authenticity is alignment—when values, words, and actions tell the same story.
Research shows that authentic leadership is associated with higher trust, stronger organizational commitment, and more principled decision-making, particularly in times of uncertainty.⁵ In unstable environments, predictability rooted in values becomes one of the most powerful leadership tools available.
For women especially, authenticity is radical. Many of us have been conditioned to perform acceptability rather than lead from alignment. Yet authenticity is not a liability. It is a competitive advantage.
Still Standing—and Leading Differently
Leadership is not measured by the number of followers you create, but by the leaders you develop.
The clearest indicator of effective leadership is not control, but growth—when people outgrow your mentorship, and you feel pride rather than threat.
Every woman who leads authentically creates space for another woman to do the same.
When you refuse to diminish your humanity, you are not simply leading differently; you are leading with humanity. You are redefining what leadership looks like.
And when the rules change—as they inevitably do—your humanity is not what holds you back.
It is what allows you to remain standing.
References
- Joan C. Williams et al., What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know (NYU Press 2014).
- Hannah Riley Bowles et al., Social Incentives for Gender Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiations, 103 Psychological Science 229–233 (2007).
- Stephen W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation (W.W. Norton & Co. 2011).
- Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley 2018).
- Bruce J. Avolio & William L. Gardner, Authentic Leadership Development: Getting to the Root of Positive Forms of Leadership, 16 The Leadership Quarterly 315–338 (2005).
