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Panelists June Felix (Former CEO, IG Group plc), Danuta Gray (Chair, Croda plc) and Oliver Shah (Founder, Newcome Advisory) shared their perspectives with RRA Artemis co-founder Hetty Pye on how women CEOs are represented in the media, the challenges they face, and constructive solutions for aspiring and current leaders, boards, and journalists alike.
We’ve reported extensively on the “double bind” women CEOs face—our research, “Time to Tell a Different Story: Analyzing Societal and Media Representation of CEOs” found that women CEOs are twice as likely to be described as both “too ambitious” and “lacking ambition” compared to men CEOs, and three times more likely to be described as “lacking confidence” than their male counterparts.
While this double bind goes back decades—and indeed, our panelists shared recent personal experiences that reinforce these finding’s relevance today—the discussion was solutions-oriented, focusing on building resilience and developing authentic management strategies; the board’s role in addressing bias head-on; and evolving organizational succession and development processes to identify top leaders, regardless of media representations.
Here’s what they shared.
Regulators, media, people, investors, your employees—and yourself.
Reconciling that media management is part of the top job is key to broader CEO success. That said, panelists reinforced that defining what you’re comfortable sharing about your personal life right away is key to maintaining resilience in the face of a difficult media landscape.
Because there are so few women CEOs, the media pays more attention to them. This can be both a positive and negative.
Instead of focusing on the inherent pressures this brings, panelists encouraged women CEOs to “use the media as much as it wants to use you.” When these leaders embrace media coverage as an opportunity to connect, it can reframe the experience. Instead of seeing media engagement as a burden, view it as a platform to tell your company’s story in the best possible way.
As one panelist noted, “Twenty years ago, you needed to trade yourself for good coverage. Today, you can tell corporate stories instead.”
The panel agreed that intensive media training early on in one’s career is hugely helpful in taking control of one’s public persona. While these sessions can be difficult—indeed, one panelist noted that it was one of the most “excruciating training and development processes [they’ve] ever done"—media trainings pay off in multitudes.
Ensure you’ve dedicated meaningful time to learning this skill before you’re facing a negative situation—the earlier you can do this and the more you can practice, the better.
Additionally, women CEOs should look to develop strong relationships with trusted journalists and build a bank of goodwill to draw on. Like anyone else, journalists respond to those with whom they have strong, authentic relationships. It’s vitally important to remember that journalists want to understand you as a confident leader.
As one panelist noted, “You likely won’t be the perfect fit a job; people rarely are. Women are generally very good at holistic, multisystem thinking—and this is a real distinguisher. If you can highlight this in your narrative, it will stand out with both boards and the media.”
For CEOs and CEO hopefuls, demonstrating and articulating those skills is critical. Especially for those who have less straightforward careers, demonstrating this resiliency shows that you can survive in many environments.
Panelists urged a holistic communications and media strategy that looks beyond traditional media and spans powerful resources like social media, company websites, and LinkedIn. With the rise of social media and other digital media channels, CEOs have many more opportunities to control the narrative.
When it comes to personal brand, the consensus was to “wrap your personal story around the organization’s mission,” rather than making it solely about oneself. This makes it much easier to hold one’s boundaries and not feel pressured to overshare parts of their life they’d prefer to keep private.
One speaker said, “Being a CEO is like being a sandcastle. You’re only standing for a while, and once you’ve gone, you’re forgotten about. It’s not all about you—to me, that was comforting.”
Panelists shared their views about the importance of women leaders sharing the realities of leading as a woman, and the role modelling this transparency for others.
However, returning to the point about defining and holding one’s boundaries, she clarified that it’s paramount for women leaders to be “true to themselves” and determine how much they feel comfortable saying. As another panelist noted, as a woman CEO, your presence already speaks volumes about your organization. It’s prudent to consider what narrative your organization needs in the moment.
Remember: board chairs have a responsibility to manage media environments too. Don’t assume you have to take all the responsibility for media management; instead, trust in the working partnership you’ve established with your chair, and know that they will have your back.
To generate a greater range of choices, boards need to be bolder and more imaginative in their succession planning pipelines. Boards tend to look for linear progression, traditional CVs; yet the world is incredibly volatile, and this is amplified and exaggerated by the media.
Of course, boards are tasked with finding the best leaders for their organizations, and there will always be an element of wanting to find someone with “the right experience.” However, chairs need to recognize that succession isn’t just about the CV; it’s about exposure, understanding what it means to be senior executive (vs an operator), and adept stakeholder management.
When we employ courageous thinking around leadership development, it allows boards to look further into the organization to find more qualified leaders in unexpected places. As one panelist said, “Media is part of forming that narrative—but only part. It’s also on us as board chairs to bring back courageous thinking about leadership development.”
In the face of global shifts that are rapidly changing the nature of modern leadership, boards must focus on forward-looking competencies—self-knowledge, systems thinking, resilience, and driving wider impact—that both identify candidates who may have been otherwise overlooked, and ensure their current CEO is being judged in a fair and future-focused manner.
Bias is a part of life. But when these takes appear in media coverage, board chairs have the power to counteract these takes, both internally and externally. By ensuring they personally hold every CEO to the same performance standards and exhibiting consistent levels of public support for their organization’s leadership, board directors can help shift the narrative around women CEOs.
The data is clear: women CEOs face a tougher media environment. This has a meaningful impact on their experience (and often, their tenure) in role.
At RRA, we view media as a proxy for society. In the face of women leaders exiting the workforce at the highest rate in decades, the way publications frame the few corporate women in power has the potential to impact not only their personal experience in role, but women’s overall representation in top jobs globally.
We encourage journalists to employ models like the Finkbeiner Test, which outlines rules that help publications avoid gratuitous gender profiles. If one asks: “Would I write this about a man?” and the answer is no, consider how we can begin to tell new, more interesting stories about our leaders.
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