留在游戏中：女性首席执行官如何建立持久的领导力（英）2026

People & Organizational Performance Practice Staying in the game:How women CEOs build What distinguishes those who achieve sustained excellence in the CEO job?In-depth conversations with leaders reveal five common principles they rely by Aalia Ratani, Carolyn Dewar, and Johanne Lavoie The CEO role testsany leader’s resilience. For women, the scrutiny can be sharper, theresistance more persistent, and the margin for error thinner. The chief executive job is oftendescribed as the loneliest in business; with women still underrepresented at the very top, the Seasoned women CEOs, however, have learned to meet those realities. They have crafted andlived by a set of leadership principles that strengthen their effectiveness and enable them and We have spent several years speaking with women leaders who have deep experiencenavigating disruption, ambiguity, political headwinds, and nonlinear career paths.1They have done so in predominantly male-led industries such as banking, energy, and logistics. In a 2025 article, we examined how early-tenure CEOs in this cohort harnessed their human-centric skillsto navigate the challenges and polarities of the role. Here, we look forward inleadership tenure to understand how seasoned women CEOs “stay in the game.” We found thatthose who sustain high performance over time share a distinctive leadership architecture—a set “Performance and humanity can coexist,” said one of the women CEOs we interviewed. “Ibelieve we can lead differently.” In this article, we explore five leadership principles these CEOs share: grounding their actions inpurpose, showing authentic courage, accepting support, seeing the system clearly, and makingthe job sustainable within the context of their broader lives. These principles offer insights for all Creating an operating system: How I lead and how we work together Leadership principles are the clear, deeply held beliefs that guide how a CEO makes decisions,especially when the path forward is uncertain. They sit between values (what we care about) and A strong leadership principle is: —Actionable: it guides choices in key moments —Nuanced: it clarifies trade-offs when priorities collide —Stable: it holds steady across cycles, crises, and contexts —Specific: it reflects the leader and the organization, not generic ideals For CEOs and other senior leaders, these principles function as a leadership operating system;they are a recognizable way of creating value. They clarify a leader’s unique edge, define howvalue is created beyond metrics, and become a “decision-making brand” that others can Make decisions based on purpose, not pressure Personal leadership principle:I exercise authority in the service of purpose, not to protect myposition or prove my worth. I use my position to advance what the organization needs, even “Purpose-driven decisions create clarity, reduce frustration, and fuel resilience,” said the CEO ofa utility. “Uniting around purpose also means anchoring decisions in long-term societal impact.In our case, that means delivering for our customers through reliability, affordability, and Our group was unequivocal: The CEO role is not about the title, but the impact. “Once you’re inthe role, you realize you’re swimming in your purpose,” said the CEO of an energy company. “Itstops being about the job and becomes about what only you can do.” “The title is not the right motivation,” said the retired CEO of a financial services company. “Youneed to want to accomplish something—to have a vision and a conviction about the contribution When deciding whether to enter a high-stakes CEO race, she tested what motivated her. Wasthere a mission worth the personal and political cost? She also has declined board seats at“fantastic companies” when the people, values, or culture didn’t align with her own, even when How we work as a team:We optimize for enterprise impact, not for individual agendas oroptics. We elevate issues based on what is right for the organization. We challenge misalignedwork quickly. Once we make decisions, we align and execute them together. Common purpose is strengthened when leaders are open and vulnerable. The utility CEO saidthat if you pretend to know something, people will figure that out fast. But “when you admit you A defining leadership pivot occurred when she admitted that she didn’t know something in anarea where she had little expertise. She found that her vulnerability led to more credibility andsupport, and better results. “Humility is a strength, and vulnerability can be a performance She believes the difference between authentic and performative vulnerability is crucial to aCEO’s success. For instance, she used to script her town halls and deliberately insert a“vulnerability story,” believing that’s what strong leaders should do. The stories were real but That was performative vulnerability: controlling disclosure to signal authenticity. When she stopped packaging the stories and allowed hersel