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Who do you picture in the CEO’s chair?
Picture this, you walk into an all-team meeting with your CEO set to deliver the year-end update. Business is thriving, everyone is happy, and your CEO has just announced that everyone is receiving a year-end bonus. Next, your Chief People Officer delivers an update on the recent employee engagement survey, engagement is high, people are motivated…
Pause and take a moment and think about the following (despite how overly optimistic that team meeting might seem nowadays) …
Gender-gap in Executive Leadership Remains
Who did you visualize when thinking of the CEO? What about the Chief People Officer? If it’s a male and female respectively, you’re likely not alone. More often that not when I do a similar exercise when facilitating training, its around 70-80% of participants think like this. It’s also okay to admit that. Who we visualize in different roles are based on our experiences. This is not random, these perceptions reflect societal norms and historical patterns in leadership representation. For decades, more men have occupied CEO roles while women have often been in people-focused functions, shaping assumptions of who belongs where.
This doesn’t mean men can’t excel at leadership in the HR function or that women can’t thrive as CEOs. It illustrates how deep-seated stereotypes influence our assumptions, even unconsciously. Our biases impact who we develop for leadership positions and promote. If we want to see greater representation of women in CEO roles, we need to start by challenging our assumptions and redefining what leadership looks like. This blog outlines where traditional leadership models fall short and how we can create real pathways for equity.
Unconscious Bias: The Silent Barrier
How our experiences influence our perceptions and assumptions can lead us to develop programs that are unconsciously inequitable. When we think of DEI, for example, the discussion is often around recruitment practices. However, there are so many aspects of the employee experience that can be impacted by unconscious bias. My focus here is on leadership development. While there have been many articles written about developing these types of programs, I don’t often see recognition of the importance of DEI when it comes to access to leadership opportunities. I cite one very important statistic to help frame the discussion; that 11% of Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO (as of June 2025).
It’s fair to say there’s a long history of systemic discrimination in leadership development. While progress has been made with more women in CEO positions and boardrooms, structural inequities persist, particularly in how leadership programs define success. We need to ask why participation at these levels is still disproportionate to workforce representation (the workforce has been relatively gender-balanced for at least 35 years now). My opinion is that the root-cause of this issue is that unconscious bias in leadership development programs perpetuates systemic inequities, even when unintentional. There are subtle elements embedded in programs that highlight the leadership qualities traditionally associated with males, such as assertiveness, and decisiveness. These biases don’t just influence how leaders are evaluated; they can determine who gets access to development opportunities and ultimately, who advances into executive positions.
Putting Leadership Programs Under the Microscope
In my line of work, I am in a unique position to work closely with leadership teams, understanding their needs, and identifying those important drivers of leadership success. I’ve also had to realize that even some of the programs I’ve developed myself are part of the problem and have negative impacts on equity (albeit unintended). Part of the way to fix the issue is to acknowledge that unconscious bias exists, understand it, and then find a way to mitigate how it impacts decision making. This is based on my own experience, reflection of programs I’ve developed, and observations of dozens of leadership teams.
The process of embedding DEI deeper into your business starts with an understanding that there is no shame in having biases. Our biases are created by our experiences at an early stage, to a large degree that we cannot control. Acknowledging bias isn’t about blame but about creating awareness so we can build better systems. It’s important to recognize that the bias is there and then figure out how to mitigate it (because you will never eliminate it no matter how hard you try).
Real-World Impacts of Biased Expectations
How we fundamentally design and deliver leadership programs is where we need to look, analyze, and reflect. That starts with envisioning who a leader is, how they talk, how they walk…and this is where the problem typically lies (see my example to start this blog). What comes to mind right now as you read this article about what qualities or traits are most valued for a CEO? I typically hear words such as assertiveness and decisiveness, male-coded language. I’m not exactly saying these are bad qualities for a CEO either. However, an issue is that they are perceived a different way when demonstrated by males and females. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly. Let’s take decisiveness; when males make quick decisions, they are bold; when females make quick decisions it can be seen as reckless or impulsive.
How about assertiveness? A male CEO enforcing a decision is seen as “strong leadership”. However, a female can be perceived as holding too high a standard or lacking empathy when saying the exact same thing in the exact same way. I tested this before. I asked a female leader on my team to communicate a decision. It was met with hostility by the person receiving it. When I was speaking to them about their complaint (after they had mentioned this leader was “being difficult”), I copied the same message word for word and sent it back to the (stating that this is what I was trying to convey). The exact same message was met with appreciation for my level of tact. I’ve seen the same thing play out many times over.
Redefining Leadership
So….what can we do?
From a leadership program design perspective, there are two important DEI considerations; revisiting leadership expectations and determining if they emphasize a traditional masculine leadership style and ensuring that behavioural preferences use gender-neutral language. Programs should also broaden the definition of effective leadership to value collaboration, empathy, and adaptability alongside decisiveness and strategic thinking. This shift not only mitigates gender bias but also reflects modern organizational needs for leadership. As well, redefining these programs isn’t just an equity issue, it’s a necessity for long-term business success. Research shows that companies with diverse leadership teams outperform peers on profitability and innovation.
Our focus here is designing leadership programs. Let’s look at a couple of examples of how these biases show up in actual leadership competencies and how we can reframe them. These examples are from my lived experience and demonstrate how the same quality or trait can be reframed to be less biased. My goal is to demonstrate how we can rethink the desired leaderships qualities in the sense of the underlying behaviours that make them important.
Let’s start with driving results. There is nothing inherently wrong in expecting this of your CEO and prioritizing it in a talent development plan, since we kind of need the CEO to make the business viable. But it’s the path to those results is where I see bias. I’ve seen leadership programs value behaviours such as “pushing through obstacles to get the job done”. This can favour (perhaps inadvertently) those employees with more access to resources. A male who takes initiative to get results is given credit for “courage under fire”. If a female acts in the same way, they “need to stay in their lane”. Resilience is undoubtedly important, but when presented without a balance of adaptability or emotional intelligence, it may signal a preference for traditionally male-associated perseverance over collaboration. Prioritizing the behaviour of “pushing past obstacles” is also centered on a lone-wolf and risk-taking mentality rather than a collaborative team-focused approach. The underlying behaviour can be reframed as such as part of a leadership competency model: “Demonstrates resilience and adaptability to achieve results” or “Maintains focus and drives progress by overcoming challenges collaboratively”. These examples neutralize some bias by introducing collaboration and moving away from a lone-wolf mentality.
Let’s also consider a competency such as leading change. Again, this is a very reasonable expectation of leadership. However, the importance lies in how the behaviour expectations that demonstrate this skill are communicated. For instance, how would you interpret this behavioural description? Give it a moment to settle. “Fully owns the organization’s future and mobiles people towards a clear vision”. What does this convey? This suggests assertiveness and authority. The term mobilize is top-down leadership and hierarchical. Yes, sometimes we just need somebody to make a decision, but it does not need to come at the expense of ignoring other perspectives when it comes to shaping company direction. When we frame leadership in this way, it unintentionally signals that it is someone who takes charge alone rather than thinking through solutions with others. It reinforces the perception that leadership is about dominance, which can alienate individuals whose leadership strengths lean toward collaboration and empathy. Research consistently shows that organizations thrive when diverse perspectives contribute to direction. The underlying behaviour outlined above can be reframed this way to be more gender-balanced: “Collaboratively shapes the organization’s future and engages others to align around a common purpose”. This now signals a team-based responsibility, shifts to an inclusive mindset, and maintains a strategic thinking perspective without being authoritative.
Expanding the Leadership Lens
As leadership development continues to evolve, it is important that these programs not only have gender-neutral language but also expand on what constitutes effective leadership. For example, empathy, perseverance, and emotional intelligence can often be underrepresented in traditional leadership programs. Historically, leadership development has focused heavily on transactional and performance-driven skills such as decisiveness, strategic vision, and financial acumen. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to balance programs with more relational skills, incorporate diverse leadership styles, and normalize vulnerability in leadership. A few often overlooked competencies are empathy, emotional intelligence, and active listening. Empathy and compassion allow leaders to understand and respond to the needs of their teams, creating psychological safety. Emotional intelligence goes beyond managing emotions; it equips leaders to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics and make thoughtful decisions under pressure. Active listening, often less prioritized than assertiveness, ensures voices are heard and that decision making is perceived to be more inclusive.
Looking Beyond Quotas – Changing the System
It is clear that unconscious bias has systemically impacted advancement opportunities for female leaders. It’s subtle…but it’s there. The main takeaway here is that leadership development must move beyond traditional models and integrate more balanced thinking from a gender perspective. The way to get more women into CEO roles is not by setting quotas. It’s about fundamentally challenging our thinking in a grassroots way. That means revisiting the qualities and behaviours that we reward, questioning whether we overemphasize certain traits, and redefining what effective leadership looks like. This will broaden our leadership lens, open the door for more women to advance, and also build leadership teams that reflect today’s diverse workforce. Quotas might change the numbers, but a different mindset will change the system.
I can appreciate that this opinion may be taken with a grain of salt when it comes from a 40-year-old white male who hasn’t experienced the same career roadblocks. I can at least point out where I think there are blind spots and how we can create some reflection points to chart the path forward. When I’ve analyzed leadership development programs, they look fairly equitable from the 40,000 birds-eye view. However, as they say, the devil is in the details.
Practical Tools
Gender Decoders analyzes the language in your job descriptions or leadership program documents to identify words that are subtly coded as masculine or feminine. Research shows that certain words, such as “assertive,” “dominant,” or “competitive”, tend to attract more male applicants, while words like “supportive,” “understanding,” or “collaborative” tend to appeal more to women. The tool highlights these gender-coded terms, allowing you to adjust the language to be more neutral and inclusive, which can help broaden your talent pool and reduce bias at the earliest stages of recruitment or leadership development communications. A widely recognized tool is Gender Decoder for Job Ads (by Kat Matfield).
https://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com
Future Articles
While this article primarily focuses on gender and the impact of gender bias in leadership development programs, it’s important to acknowledge that bias doesn’t exist in isolation. Intersectionality, which is the overlapping and interconnected nature of social identities like race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and ability, adds further layers of complexity. These factors influence leadership opportunities and experiences in unique ways. We’ll explore intersectionality in greater depth in a future blog, as it deserves its own focused discussion.
About the Author
Greg Hussey is a human resources professional with 15 years of progressive, diverse experience. He has a passion for helping organizations develop their people, working closely in building a culture of high-engagement and performance through people and culture initiatives.
Greg specializes in partnering with executive leadership teams to deliver impactful people strategies. He is passionate about building high-performance cultures and thrives on delivering HR programs that are strategic and operationally effective. Known for his proactive, results-driven approach, Greg enjoys project-based work, particularly in areas such as employee engagement, organizational development, and strategic planning. Whether he’s leading an HR transformation initiative or supporting leadership through change management, Greg brings insight, structure, and energy to every engagement.
Greg holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Co-op) from Memorial University of Newfoundland and an MBA from the University of Alberta’s School of Business. He is also a Chartered Professional in Human Resources (CPHR), reflecting his commitment to continuous development in the HR field.
Keep an eye out for our future blog posts, where we’ll address relevant and current trends in the field of people and culture.