Are female leaders underestimating their impact?

Women in leadership roles may be underestimating their impact at work, compared with their male counterparts, raising questions about how employers use feedback, development and coaching to support women’s career progression.

Analysis from employee experience consultancy People Insight, of 2,120 leadership 360 feedback assessments across 105 organisations, found that men and women gave themselves similar ratings.

However, women received slightly higher ratings from colleagues and others around them, creating a wider gap between their own assessment of their leadership and how their impact was perceived by others.

The pattern was found across every leadership competency measured, including strategy, influencing, performance and agility.

While the findings do not establish why the gap exists, People Insight said they suggest many women may be having a stronger leadership impact than they recognise themselves.

The findings have implications for employers seeking to improve gender equality in leadership, but also for workplace wellbeing.

Repeatedly underestimating strengths or achievements could influence whether employees put themselves forward for promotion, take on new responsibilities or feel confident in their contribution. Employers therefore have a role to play in ensuring development conversations provide employees with evidence of their strengths as well as areas for improvement.

People Insight cautioned against simply interpreting lower self-assessments as a lack of confidence. More conservative ratings could instead reflect high personal standards and a commitment to development.

However, without balanced and evidence-based feedback, it warned that capable leaders could discount their achievements or hesitate when opportunities arise.

Tom Debenham, Managing Director at People Insight, said: “So many women are already having a stronger impact than they realise, but bringing this down to confidence alone isn’t good enough. Organisations need to help leaders recognise their strengths, trust the evidence and use those strengths more deliberately.”

The research adds another dimension to workplace conversations around the so-called gender confidence gap.

Rather than placing responsibility on individual women to become more confident, the findings suggest employers should consider whether their leadership development and feedback processes give people an accurate picture of how they are performing.

For HR and wellbeing leaders, this could mean using structured “360-degree” feedback alongside coaching, mentoring and development conversations to ensure strengths are recognised and reinforced.

This may be particularly important where employees’ perceptions of their own performance could affect career progression and their wider experience of work.

People Insight said organisations should use broader, evidence-based feedback to make strengths as visible as development needs, helping leaders understand where they are already having an impact and how those strengths can be used more deliberately.

The consultancy’s full report, The numbers are in: women leaders may have a stronger impact than they realise, explores how 360-degree feedback, coaching and action planning could help make those strengths more visible.