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Getting into Leadership Roles as a Woman

There’s a lot of talk about the pipeline — that magical conveyer belt that calls a select few up toward the top of organizations. The pipeline is critically important for women, who in most organizations are notably absent from it.

This underrepresentation of eligible females is often cited as the excuse for everything from pay inequity and the shortage of women in executive education programs to the miserable paucity of women in top decision-making roles.

And so it benefits females to understand this important concept and apply it to their own strategic career planning. One good resource is The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel, all high-powered consultants/coaches.

Charan and his colleagues describe six “leadership passages,” or increasingly complex roles that everyone — male and female — must learn to handle in order to rise to the top. Look at this hierarchy of passages to see where you are ready to perform now and where you might eventually like to be: