Women in business- what does "power" mean to you?
Women now hold 29% of C-suite positions in corporate America, up from 17% a decade ago, according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace research. Progress, on paper.
But the same research keeps surfacing something less visible: the broken rung. For every 100 men promoted to manager, roughly 80 women get the same call. That gap opens up long before anyone reaches the C-suite conversation and compounds year on year after.
Who gets handed authority earlier? And who needs to build their own and reclaim their personal power? Because what I see in the leaders and founders I work with is this- there are two very different kinds of power.
Personal Power vs. Positional Power
Positional power comes with the title. It sits on the org chart, it’s granted by someone above you, and it evaporates the moment you leave the room, or the role.
Personal power is different. It’s built, not granted. It comes from trust, standards and integrity. It travels with you. It’s your personal brand- whether you think you’re building one, or not.
I was sitting at a Chamber of Commerce lunch the other day and we started talking about Everest Base Camp. I mentioned that my husband and I are travelling to Nepal to do the trek this October. Somebody seemed impressed. I downplayed it. Partly because, in some rooms I’m in, it’s not the biggest endurance event I or people I know have participated in. But partly because this is what we’re conditioned to do.
Most of the women I work with have been building extraordinary personal power for years, often while being denied the positional kind. People go to them before big decisions. Their read on a situation is usually right. But often, they watch someone with less judgement and more title get the promotion.
This shouldn’t stop us from building and leveraging our personal power.
Redefining Power on Your Terms
Somewhere along the way, most of us inherited a definition of power that isn’t ours- one which was visible to us growing up and often modelled by people who didn’t look like us.
The most fulfilled owners and leaders I’ve worked with aren’t the ones chasing the external definition of power or status- but they’re the people who’ve identified the summits of life and business that matter to them and fallen in love with the journey to get there. I often quote top female trail runners like Courtney Dauwalter and Rachel Entrekin. They seek joy on the trails and aim to show up as good people throughout the race- not just finish with a podium and glory. Personal power to them looks like presence in nature, relationships and doing 1 or 2 things better than before.
Redefining power on your terms can start with asking yourself the right questions.
Influence Without Burnout
For years, the model of influence I saw modelled (and adopted in my own business!) was control. Be in every meeting. Weigh in on every decision. Be the person things run through.
It’s an exhausting way to lead, and it’s a particularly common trap for women, because visibility has so often been the only currency on offer. But influence that depends on you being everywhere is just a bottleneck with good intentions, and it burns out exactly the leaders who can least afford to disappear.
Real influence is the standard your team defaults to when you’re not in the room. The decision made correctly because the principle was clear, not because you were watching. Building that kind of influence takes longer than building presence. It also outlasts you, which presence never does.
Owning Your Decisions
Our relationship to power shapes how women learn to make decisions long before promotion is even on the table.
When authority is something you have to prove rather than something handed to you, it’s easy to develop a habit of checking, softening, and seeking reassurance before committing to a call.
I’ve watched this cost women the recognition they were trying to protect. An imperfect decision made cleanly and owned often builds more trust than a hedged decision made too cautiously. People don’t follow leaders because they’re never wrong but because they trust what happens after they are.
Owning your decisions isn’t about waiting to be certain, but about accountability. Make the call, live with the outcome, adjust without spiralling into self-doubt, and do it again next week. That pattern, repeated, is what personal power is actually made of.
Where to Start
Name what you actually want power for. What are the specific outcomes, people, or work it would let you protect?
Stop waiting for the title. Use the judgement and trust you’ve already built instead of banking it for a promotion that may or may not come on schedule.
Build influence that doesn’t need your presence to work. Invest in the standards and principles your team can run without you, not just the meetings you show up to.
Own the next decision fully. Make the call, and let your track record, not your title, do the talking.
The data on positional power is real, but it doesn’t have to be the reason you wait to start using the power you’ve already earned.
This article was originally published in the July edition of Women Who Lead, with thanks to Michelle Crutcher and the team for featuring my thoughts monthly!
Originally published in my 20% More newsletter on LinkedIn on 10 August 2026.
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