What 132 Women Executives Told Us About Reaching the C-Suite 

Throughout March 2026, Stanton Chase asked 132 women executives across 45 countries a single question: what advice would you give to women earlier in their careers who aspire to the C-suite?

The women executives who participated answered independently, without seeing each other’s responses, and their quotes were published daily throughout March. Reading through all 132 responses, the convergence is hard to explain as coincidence. These women don’t know each other, work in different industries and on different continents, and yet they are overwhelmingly saying the same things. 

That convergence raises a question the existing research on women in leadership hasn’t adequately addressed: if senior women broadly agree on what it takes to reach the top, why aren’t more women getting there? 

McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report, now in its eleventh year, found that women still hold just 29% of C-suite roles, unchanged from 2024. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women receive the same promotion, and for women of colour the number drops to 54. At current rates, McKinsey estimates it will take nearly 50 years to reach parity for all women. 

The 132 responses we collected don’t contradict this data. They sit alongside it and offer something the large-scale studies often can’t: the accumulated pattern recognition of women who made it through despite the structural barriers. Five themes emerged, and the consistency across them is hard to dismiss. 

Move Before You Feel Ready

This was the most dominant theme by a large margin. Over 50 of the 132 respondents said some version of “don’t wait until you feel 100% prepared.” It came up across every geography, every industry, and every seniority level. One board member said: “Be brave and take opportunities when they arise. Don’t wait until you feel 100% ready.” A group CFO at a multinational said the same thing in almost identical words: “Seize opportunities as soon as they present themselves. Don’t hesitate until every uncertainty has been removed.” A board member at a national rail infrastructure company added the gendered dimension directly: “Men often step into new roles earlier, even when they don’t feel fully prepared. You’ll never feel 100% ready. Take the leap anyway.” 

The reason this came up so consistently is worth examining. Research from the Center for Creative Leadership found that many women view career advancement as something they need to earn entirely on their own merits, and feel uncomfortable stepping into roles they haven’t fully mastered or “earned”. CCL noted that women in their leadership development programs frequently say things like “if I do a good job, people will notice” and “I want to earn that promotion myself; it feels like cheating if I have a senior decision-maker on my side.” Over 50 women in our sample are collectively pushing back on that instinct, and the message is consistent enough to be worth taking seriously: the role will teach you what you don’t know yet, but only if you take it. 

Get Sponsors, Not Just Mentors

Around 35 of the 132 respondents emphasised building networks, finding mentors, or cultivating sponsors, and the women who drew the distinction between mentors and sponsors were precise about why it matters. One university institute director said: “Build relationships with sponsors who speak your name in rooms you’re not in.” A CEO and founder said: “Cultivate sponsors who will bet their political capital on you for stretch roles and succession opportunities.” A senior non-executive director added: “Find sponsors, not just mentors, and lift others as you climb.” 

The research backs up the weight these women placed on this distinction. McKinsey’s 2025 report found that employees with sponsors have been promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without, and that women are consistently less likely than men to have a sponsor at every stage of the pipeline. Yale’s research on the subject found that sponsorship is one of the strongest predictors of promotions and salary growth, roughly equivalent in predictive power to the number of hours someone works, and more predictive than gender, personality, education, or experience. A Catalyst study went further, finding that women with mentors were actually less likely to be promoted than women with sponsors, because mentors advise while sponsors advocate, and advocacy is what moves careers. 

Several of the respondents were explicit that the most effective sponsors are often men, because men still hold the majority of positions with the institutional power to make promotions happen. One CEO and board director said it directly: “Be intentional about alliances, especially with men, because power structures still matter.” This is advice that many women find uncomfortable to hear, but it appeared often enough across the 132 responses to be impossible to ignore. 

Make Your Work Visible

About 24 of the 132 respondents specifically addressed visibility, and their advice ran against the way many women are socialised to approach their careers. One CEO was blunt about it: “Performance and visibility are the entry tickets: great work only matters if decision-makers see it.” A head of people and culture with thirty years of experience added: “Women often do outstanding work behind the scenes. Visibility is not an end in itself, but necessary to exert influence and shape things.” A longtime career journalist offered the most tactical version of this advice: “Observe precisely which micro-political tactics are effective in your organisation, apart from your professional excellence. Write down which ones suit you and use them consistently as access cards. Don’t just sit and pray while you keep on delivering.” 

McKinsey’s research consistently finds that women are less likely to receive the kinds of high-visibility assignments and career-boosting advocacy that men receive from senior colleagues, particularly at entry level. Only 46% of entry-level women report receiving the kinds of career-advancing support from senior colleagues that their male peers do. Visibility is not vanity. It is a prerequisite for being considered, and the women who have reached the top are nearly unanimous in saying that waiting to be noticed is not a viable career strategy. 

Build Breadth Before You Need It

Around 29 respondents emphasised understanding the whole business rather than excelling in a single function. One general manager at a pharmaceutical company captured the core of it: “If early success often comes from being great in one area, for C-suite readiness it comes from understanding how the whole business works.” A chief marketing officer at a major food company was more specific: “Own the P&L.” A non-executive director across several boards gave the same advice in practical terms: “Manage your career to demonstrate that you have P&L experience.” 

McKinsey’s research on women’s career advancement has identified this as a structural issue: while the proportion of women in the C-suite has grown from 17% to 29% over the past decade, much of that growth is concentrated in support functions like HR, finance, and legal. These are roles that typically lack the promotional pathway to the CEO position and offer fewer opportunities to demonstrate business-wide impact. The women in our sample who had reached general management or CEO roles were overwhelmingly the ones advising others to seek P&L responsibility, cross-functional exposure, and international experience early, before those credentials become requirements for the next role. One VP at a multinational technology company put it well: “Go international if you can. Experience different company cultures and countries. This will shape how you see business and leadership.” 

Stay Authentic and Build the Right Support System

About 27 respondents emphasised authenticity, and they were making a specific point that goes beyond the motivational poster version of the word: imitating male leadership styles is both unsustainable and unnecessary. One CFO at an insurance company put it concisely: “Too loud, too quiet, too much, too little, too complicated, too modest. Stay authentic and trust yourself. You don’t need to explain who you are.” A partner at an infrastructure investment firm added: “Don’t think that your value is determined by how you can emulate your male colleagues. Part of your value comes from your ability to approach a problem differently.” A general manager at a cosmetics company said: “More human and collaborative perspectives, often present in women leaders, can improve decisions and strengthen teams.” 

A smaller but notable group of six respondents extended this into less commonly discussed territory: the importance of choosing the right life partner. One former managing director said: “Choose your life partner wisely, they will be your true co-CEO in life.” A managing director at a national financial institution called the personal environment “an often-underestimated factor for success” and described it as “an essential foundation for being able to perform with lasting impact at the highest level.” This is not advice that appears in most leadership development frameworks, but it came up often enough to be worth noting: the women who sustain C-suite careers over the long term are the ones whose home lives support their professional demands rather than competing with them. 

What the Convergence Means

The most interesting finding from this exercise is not any individual piece of advice but the convergence itself. Without coordination, 132 women produced an overwhelmingly consistent set of answers that, taken together, describe a set of behaviours designed to compensate for structural disadvantages that the research has documented for over a decade: the broken rung in promotion pipelines, the sponsorship deficit, the visibility penalty for work done behind the scenes, and the concentration of women in functional roles that don’t lead to general management. 

The advice is useful for individual women, but it also carries a message for the organisations and boards that employ them. If the most successful women in business are consistently telling their younger peers to seek sponsors because the organisation won’t assign them, to make their work visible because the organisation won’t notice it, and to take risks before they feel ready because the organisation won’t invite them to, then the question is not whether women need to do these things (they clearly do), but why organisations continue to be structured in ways that require women to work around the system rather than within it. 

Stanton Chase partners with boards and senior leadership teams on executive appointments, succession planning, and leadership assessment in more than 70 offices across 45 countries. The patterns in this article inform how we think about leadership placement: when we understand what it takes for talented leaders to succeed, we can help organisations build the conditions that make it possible. 

The 132 women who answered our question have shown us what works at the individual level. The question now is whether the organisations they lead, and the ones trying to follow their example, are willing to build environments where this advice becomes unnecessary. 

About the Author

Eleri Dodsworth, Partner at Stanton Chase London and EMEA Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, specialises in executive search, succession planning, and executive assessment, working with chairs and leadership teams to identify, benchmark, and appoint senior leaders whose diverse capabilities, experience, and perspectives produce organisational impact. 

Additional Thanks

This research would not have been possible without the many people across Stanton Chase who reached out to women executives to collect these quotes. Hundreds of colleagues across the firm contributed to the effort. What began as a LinkedIn initiative designed to give women a platform to share their perspectives and advice throughout March grew into the thematic analysis presented here.  

Above all, we are grateful to the 132 women who contributed their advice freely and generously, motivated by nothing other than a desire to help the next generation of women leaders.