You're Not Too Much. The Room Is Too Small.
Why being called "too much" might be the best compliment you ever get.
Too Loud. Too Organized. Too Pretty. Too Much.
I have been told I was "too" something for my entire career. Too loud. Too organized (in marketing, that's like being told you're too good at breathing). Too pretty to be taken seriously. Then, once I was taken seriously, too intense.
So, when I started my own company, I named it Too Much. Partly as a joke. Mostly as a receipt.
Here's what I figured out after years of leading marketing in medtech, dental, and healthcare, some of the most buttoned-up rooms in business: the only thing I have ever been too much of is dedicated. Hardworking. Prepared. And if that's too much, I'd like to request a bigger room.
This is for the woman early in her career who has already heard some version of "you might want to tone it down." You don't need to. But you do deserve to know why you keep hearing it, because it isn't about you. It's about a set of rules nobody wrote down, and you're allowed to stop playing by them.
The Double Bind: A Game With No Winning Move
The double bind is the trap where the traits we expect from a leader and the traits we expect from a woman point in opposite directions. So a woman in charge gets graded on two report cards at once, and they contradict each other.
Catalyst named it back in 2007, and the title says it all: "Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don't." They found three traps:
- Too soft or too tough. There is no "just right." Be warm and you're not leadership material. Be decisive and suddenly you're "abrasive."
- The higher bar. Women are held to stricter standards and get less credit for meeting them. You don't get to be good. You have to be undeniable.
- Competent or liked. Pick one. Women rarely get both. Crush the quarter and people call you "a lot." Be lovely and people wonder if you can make the hard call.
If you've ever rewritten an email four times to remove every trace of an exclamation point, and then added one back so you didn't sound mad, congratulations. You have met the double bind. It lives in your drafts folder.
Here's the part that matters: you cannot win a game that's rigged to have no winning move. So stop trying to find the perfect setting between "too nice" and "too much." It doesn't exist. Be effective, be yourself, and let the people who are confused by that stay confused.
The Rest of the Obstacle Course
The double bind has friends. You'll meet them. Knowing their names makes them a lot less scary, the same way a monster under the bed is less scary once you realize it's a pile of laundry.
The broken rung. The biggest drop-off for women isn't at the top. It's the very first promotion to manager. In the 2025 Women in the Workplace report, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women were. For Black women, it was 60. Part of the reason: only 31% of entry-level women have a sponsor, versus 45% of men. Mentors give you advice. Sponsors say your name in rooms you're not in.
The glass cliff. Researchers Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam found that women are more likely to be handed leadership when things are already on fire. Congratulations on your promotion! Here's a fire extinguisher. If it goes badly, it gets blamed on you, not the fire. That's not automatically a reason to say no. It's a reason to negotiate for the budget, the runway, and the authority to actually put it out.
Office housework. Planning the party, taking the notes, onboarding the new hire, ordering the cake. Economists Linda Babcock and colleagues (authors of The No Club) found women get asked to do this non-promotable work more often, and say yes more often. It's important work. It's also invisible at review time.
Prove it again. Legal scholar Joan C. Williams describes how women have to prove their competence over and over, while men are more often judged on potential. He's a rising star. She needs one more year of data.
Imposter feelings. Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes named the "imposter phenomenon" in 1978 after studying high-achieving women. Here's my hot take: if you feel like an imposter in a system built to make you doubt yourself, that's not a character flaw. That's the system working as designed.
So, What Do You Actually Do?
You can't fix a rigged system by next Tuesday. But you can stop letting it run your calendar, your voice, and your wardrobe. Here's what I wish someone had told me at 25.
- Stop shrinking to fit. Your style, your voice, the laugh people can hear from the parking lot: none of it cancels out your results. Individuality and effectiveness can share a desk. Be so good they have to update their idea of what a leader looks like.
- Speak up. Then speak up again. If your idea gets ignored and then applauded five minutes later in a deeper voice, say, "Thanks for building on my point." Warm. Clear. Receipt delivered.
- Get a sponsor, not just a mentor. Ask directly: "I want to be considered for X. Would you advocate for me?" The worst answer is no, and no is just information.
- Say no to the cake. Not to all the office housework, just more than your share. Try: "I took notes last time. Can someone else grab it today?" Then enjoy the cake you didn't have to order.
- Keep receipts. Start a running brag file. When prove-it-again shows up at review time, you bring evidence instead of trying to remember what you did in March.
- Get comfortable being uncomfortable. I love a model with four zones: comfort, fear, learning, and growth. Most of us bounce between comfort and fear. The way into growth isn't a giant leap. It's Kaizen: one small improvement, over and over. Tiny, stubborn steps add up to a career.
- Send the elevator back down. Once you're in the room, sponsor someone. Say her name when she's not there. That's how the broken rung gets fixed: one woman pulling the next one up.
Be Too Much. On Purpose.
Here's the truth nobody puts in the onboarding deck: the women who changed the rules were all called "too much" first. Too ambitious. Too outspoken. Too sure of themselves. History just calls them "first."
So, the next time someone tells you you're too loud, too driven, too polished, too anything, smile and say thank you. Then go do the thing anyway. You're not too much. The room is too small. Your job isn't to shrink. It's to build a bigger room and to leave the door open behind you.
The next generation of women leaders is watching. So here's your homework, and it's due this week: speak up once in a meeting where you'd normally stay quiet, and say one other woman's name in a room she isn't in. Two small moves. Then do it again next week. That's how a bigger room gets built.
