You have been looking at the wrong problem
The four situations that keep senior women stuck, and what is still in your hands.
Isabel Fonseca · ICF Executive Coach · PCC
Introduction
After six years of working as an Executive & Leadership Coach with senior women at companies like ABN AMRO, Rabobank, PwC and Allianz, I keep seeing the same challenges. Corporate politics. The likeability double standard. The lack of sponsorship. The invisible ceiling that is not written anywhere but everyone feels. The underestimation in male-dominated environments.
This is all real, and concerning. I am not going to tell you the system is fair, because it is not. The structural barriers are documented. The biases are there. Many of the things working against you are outside your control.
And it is important that we acknowledge them, because it also gives us self-compassion. It recognises the amount of energy that is drained while we navigate systems that were not built with women (and other minorities) in mind.
We all need to keep working on building better structures. But the system is not something any of us can change on our own, or overnight.
But here is the question I keep coming back to:
If the system explains everything, why do two women facing the same politics and the same biases end up in completely different places?
What I have found is that there is always an internal layer underneath the external challenge. And that internal layer is the part you can actually work on. Not to make the system go away. It will not. But to stop giving it more power over you than it deserves.
Below are the four situations I see most in the women I work with: the core diagnostic of the Becoming HER framework. For each one: what it looks like, the internal block underneath it, the external challenge around it, and what changes when you work on it.
Situation 01
The Integration Situation
You got what you worked for, and it feels harder now than before you had it
You might recognise this
“I just need to get through the first six months and then I'll feel more settled.”
You did the work. You built the case, you navigated the politics, you waited for the right moment and you made the move. The promotion happened. The title changed. And within weeks, sometimes days, something unexpected arrived with it.
The self-doubt did not decrease with the new level. It actually increased. Decisions now sit in your head for hours. You find yourself over-preparing for meetings. You read and re-read emails before sending them. You lie awake running through conversations in your head.
The internal block
Your identity has not yet caught up with your new title. From the outside you look exactly like someone who deserved this. From the inside you are caught in a quiet, exhausting questioning of whether the people who gave it to you were right.
The external challenge
The new level came with new exposure. Every decision is more visible. Every mistake lands differently than it did before. The relationships you built your credibility on are shifting: you are no longer a peer to some of the people you used to count on, and you have not yet built the same depth of trust at the new level. The organisation is watching you with a different kind of attention. And there is no grace period that anyone tells you about. The expectation is that you are already the person this role requires.
What working on this gives you back
The rumination is not evidence that you were the wrong choice. It is evidence of that gap. And that gap is closeable. When you understand what is actually happening, the internal noise loses some of its power over you. You stop trying to endure the transition and start doing the actual work of integrating it. You build evidence at this new level deliberately rather than waiting to feel ready. And the performing, the exhausting performance of someone who belongs here, starts to give way to actually belonging here. That shift changes everything about how you lead, how you communicate, and how much energy you have left at the end of the day. It also brings back the excitement of this new role.
Situation 02
The Clarity Situation
You know you want more, you just can't see what that looks like yet
You might recognise this
“I know I want more than this. I just can't see what that actually looks like.”
You have spent years building toward something. And at some point, whether a promotion, a restructure or a personal transition, the thing you were building toward stopped feeling like yours. You stay busy. You deliver. But privately, you are not sure you are moving in the right direction, or that you even know what the right direction is anymore.
The internal block
What looks like a strategic problem is almost always a vision problem. And the real reason the vision is blurry often does not have to do with the organisation. It is that naming what you truly want makes it real, and real means it could fail.
The external challenge
Without a clear vision of your own, you cannot connect your direction to the organisation's direction. You stay busy but do not move forward. You read as not strategic enough. Not because you lack the thinking, but because you have no internal compass to align to anything external.
What working on this gives you back
A clear vision will not stop the bias or challenges around you. But it changes your relationship to it entirely. When you know what you are building, the external noise stops being a distraction and becomes information. You stop waiting for the organisation or environment to change. You start asking what you can do from where you are right now, toward what you are actually building.
Situation 03
The Action Situation
The vision is clear, and something keeps pulling you back from it
You might recognise this
“I know what the next level looks like. I just keep finding reasons it's not the right moment.”
You know where you want to go. Maybe it is a seat at a different table, a career transition with more ownership, or a move that finally aligns with who you have become. You can describe it clearly. And yet you are not moving toward it, not at the pace you know you are capable of.
The internal block
It is easy to explain this externally: the timing is not right, the sponsor network is not in place yet, the organisation is in transition. Some of that may be true. But the real block is almost always internal. The Hyper-Achiever who keeps delivering instead of positioning. The Perfectionist who needs to feel more ready. The part of you that knows if you try fully you expose yourself to the chance of it not working out.
The external challenge
The broken sponsorship system is real and systemic. The promotion goes to someone who positioned themselves, not necessarily the one who performed best. You know this. You have watched it happen. And the gap between what you are capable of and where you actually are becomes harder to explain over time.
What working on this gives you back
You cannot fix the sponsorship system. But when you work on your own self-sabotage, the patterns that keep you in execution instead of positioning, you start creating opportunities from the inside. You build visibility intentionally rather than waiting to be noticed. You have the conversations you have been deferring. You put yourself in motion.
Situation 04
The Focus Situation
You are moving, but not getting closer to what you are actually building
You might recognise this
“I am doing everything right and still not getting closer to what I am actually building.”
You have clarity on your direction and you are putting in the hours. But look at where those hours actually go. The high-visibility project that does not serve your actual direction. The junior women you are mentoring beyond your capacity. The strategic thinking time that gets consumed by your team's problems instead of your own positioning.
The internal block
You tell yourself this is the cost of operating in a complex organisation. And partly it is. But the deeper truth is that staying scattered also keeps the vision at a comfortable distance. If you never fully commit, it can never fully fail.
The external challenge
When you are unclear on your priorities, the game plays you. Your energy goes to what is loudest, most urgent, most visible to others. You become indispensable to the organisation and invisible to the people who make decisions about your next level.
What working on this gives you back
When you are clear on your vision and strategic about where your energy actually goes, you learn how to pick your battles. Corporate politics does not disappear, but you stop fighting battles that are not yours. You start protecting the time and attention that move you forward.
The bottom line
The system is far from perfect. The politics are real. The biases are documented. None of that is going away on our timeline.
What you can change, right now, in the role you are already in, is the internal pattern that is giving the external landscape more power over you than it needs to have. That is where the real work is.
It is also the answer to the question I started with. Two women can face the same politics and the same biases and end up in completely different places. The difference is rarely talent. It is the internal layer, and whether they decided to work on it.
Isabel Fonseca
I work with women in senior leadership (Senior Managers, Directors, and VPs) who are high-performing, ambitious, and ready to lead at the next level on their own terms.
- Founder
- NextFem Leaders
- Accreditation
- ICF Executive & Leadership Coach (PCC)
- Creator
- The Becoming HER Framework
- Corporate
- 13 years in finance and risk at PwC, Allianz, and NN Group
Women I have worked with lead at
Want to know which situation you are most in right now?
Three minutes. It will show you honestly where your internal block is sitting, and what you can actually change from where you already are.
Or book a free strategy sessionFree · isabelfonseca.com