Success Is Not Luck. But It Is Also Not What You Think It Is.
I want to push back on something.
There is a version of the women's success conversation that I find deeply unhelpful. It is the one that reduces achievement to a collection of habits, productivity hacks, and morning routines. The one that implies if you just optimise your schedule and think positively enough, the structural barriers will dissolve.
They will not. And pretending otherwise does a disservice to every woman who is doing everything right and still hitting invisible walls.
But here is the tension I want to hold: the structural barriers are real and they must be named and dismantled. And within those barriers, there are choices that profoundly shape outcomes. Both things are true. Neither cancels the other. In my work as a leadership coach for women, this is the tension I hold with almost every client. And learning to navigate it, rather than collapse it in one direction or the other, is one of the most important skills a woman in leadership can develop.
What does the research actually show about women and professional success?
McKinsey and LeanIn.Org's 2026 Women in the Workplace report, now in its eleventh consecutive year of tracking corporate gender progress, found that women remain underrepresented at every level above entry. For every 100 men promoted into management, 93 women are. That gap has not closed in over a decade of measurement. And this year, researchers flagged something new: an ambition gap, with women appearing to step back from corporate advancement.
I want to name what I think is actually happening. Women are not losing ambition. They are reading the room. When the ROI of sustained effort keeps going unrecognised, when only 50% of companies now say women's advancement is a high priority, down from 70% in the post-pandemic years, at some point the cost of wanting it stops feeling proportionate to the return. That is not a motivation problem. It is a rational response to an environment that has been inconsistent about matching effort with recognition.
At the same time, the commercial case for change has never been stronger. McKinsey's Diversity Wins research found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in executive teams are 25% more likely to achieve above-average profitability than those in the bottom quartile. These are not moral arguments for equity. They are commercial ones.
The case for women in leadership is not in question. What is in question is why the pipeline keeps leaking, and what both organisations and individuals can do about it. The ceiling is real. So is your agency beneath it. Knowing the difference between the two is not defeatism. It is strategy.
What is the difference between intentionality and hustle in a leadership career?
What I have observed, across my own career and in the careers of the women I coach, is that intentionality separates those who progress from those who plateau. Not hustle. Intentionality. The two feel similar but they are not the same.
Hustle is indiscriminate. It says yes to everything, runs hard in every direction, and often mistakes busyness for progress. Intentionality is selective. It asks: does this move me toward the specific life and career I am building? If not, it gets a different answer.
Being the CEO of your career requires this kind of clarity. Not a vague, aspirational sense of ambition but a specific, examined understanding of what success actually means to you, separate from what you have been socialised to pursue. Intentional women in leadership make decisions from that clarity rather than in reaction to external pressure. For more on building the self-belief that makes this possible, see our piece on knowing your worth.
How does your network shape your success as a woman in leadership?
I have said this many times and I will keep saying it: your network is not a collection of contacts. It is a living ecosystem of relationships that you either invest in or you do not.
The women I see progress most consistently are the ones who build networks with genuine generosity. They make introductions. They show up for other people's milestones. They share opportunities rather than hoarding them. And in doing so, they build the kind of social capital that opens doors no amount of individual effort could unlock.
The research supports this. A 2019 study from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that women who had a close inner circle of other women were more likely to reach senior leadership positions. Not because of the network itself, but because those relationships provided the specific kind of support, honest feedback, and advocacy that women in male-dominated environments often lack elsewhere.
Why is protecting your energy a professional strategy, not a lifestyle choice?
I will not dress this up in the language of wellness trends. The reality is straightforward: a depleted leader cannot lead well. A woman running on empty cannot make clear decisions, hold boundaries, advocate for herself, or invest meaningfully in the people around her.
Deloitte's Women at Work 2024 research found that 52% of women report feeling burned out, a figure that has risen year on year with no meaningful improvement. And the leaders responsible for others' wellbeing are often the least aware of how depleted those people are. That is a leadership problem before it is a personal one. For a fuller examination of why burnout is a leadership issue, see our article on burnout and the workplace.
Protecting your energy is not indulgence. It is a professional requirement. The women who sustain long, meaningful careers understand rest not as a reward for hard work, but as the foundation that makes the hard work possible.
For you to sit with: What does success actually mean to you, separate from what you were taught to want? When did you last examine that question honestly? Where in your professional life are you hustling rather than being intentional, and what would change if you slowed down long enough to be more deliberate?
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The structural barriers facing women in leadership are well-documented. McKinsey’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report found that for every 100 men promoted into management, only 81 women are — and this disparity widens rather than closes at senior levels. Women, particularly women of colour, are more likely to have their authority questioned, their ideas attributed to others, and their ambitions labelled as aggression rather than drive. These are not individual failings. They are systemic patterns. Understanding them allows women to respond strategically rather than internalise outcomes that are not, in fact, a measure of their capability.
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Hustle is indiscriminate effort: saying yes to everything, running hard in every direction, and mistaking busyness for progress. Intentionality is selective effort: knowing clearly what you are building, making decisions from that clarity, and declining what does not serve it. The distinction matters because hustle can produce impressive-looking activity with surprisingly little genuine progression. Intentionality, by contrast, compounds. Each deliberate decision builds toward something specific. Being the CEO of your career requires the second, not the first — which often means doing less, but with significantly more strategic purpose.
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A leadership coach for women brings specific understanding of the structural and psychological dynamics that shape women’s professional experiences — including imposter syndrome, the confidence gap, the double bind of authority and likability, and the particular pressures of being a visible minority in senior spaces. This context allows the coaching to be more precise. Rather than applying a generic framework to a woman’s career challenges, it addresses the specific intersection of personal ambition, systemic constraint, and the choices that are genuinely available within that reality. Patrice Gordon’s coaching for women is built on her own lived experience navigating and succeeding in that intersection.
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Research from Northwestern University (2019) found that women who had a close inner circle of other women were more likely to reach senior leadership positions — not because the network opened doors automatically, but because it provided the honest feedback, peer support, and advocacy that is harder to access in male-dominated environments. A strong professional network is not a contact list. It is a reciprocal ecosystem built through genuine generosity: making introductions, sharing opportunities, showing up for others. The social capital this builds over time is one of the most consistent predictors of long-term career progression for women in leadership.