The Price Women In Leadership Pay For Visibility

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Until it glares too brightly, casting long shadows that (seemingly) obscure other people. It is said to be a cardinal rule that must never be broken. I refer you to the first of The 48 Laws Of Power by Robert Greene: ‘Never outshine the master.’ There’s a name for it. Tall poppy syndrome.

About 2,500 years ago, Tarquin the Proud, Rome’s 7^th and final king, ruled by treaty and fear. Sign up to fall under his control, or else. Gabii, a city, declined with a ‘no thank you.’ They were attacked, but simply wouldn’t fall. Frustrated, Tarquin turned from siege to subterfuge, sending his son Sextus as a Trojan horse. Sextus posed as a refugee, claiming to flee his despotic father, and was taken in. Once settled, Sextus sent a messenger to Rome with a single question: what now?

Tarquin received the messenger in his garden. His answer. He walked in silence among his flowers, striking off the heads of the tallest poppies with his stick as he listened. Something clicked. The messenger returned with descriptive words that Sextus understood perfectly. He was to eliminate Gabii’s most powerful and influential men, the tallest poppies in that garden. One by one, they were removed. Stripped of its wisest citizens, Gabii surrendered to Rome without a fight.

Australians and New Zealanders gave it its modern name. Scandinavians codified its spirit in the Law of Jante: do not think you are special. Do not think you are better than us. It comes from the Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose who coined it in his 1933 novel, A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. Africans need no translation; we are fluent in ‘who does she think she is.’ I am because we are aka Ubuntu dictates success as a communal achievement.

The tall poppy syndrome (TPS) refers to the belief that poppies should grow uniformly without standing out and that if one grows too tall it should be cut down to size to maintain the status quo. It happens across workplaces and industries. So pervasively that even cardiology’s flagship publication felt compelled to weigh in. In a 2024 editorial, the European Heart Journal observed that “many women are being cut ‘down to size’” in the metaphorical poppy gardens of institutions globally.

Introducing The Tallest Of Poppies 

It happens surreptitiously; usually after a major achievement that sets them apart from their peers. It may be anything from an invitation to deliver a lecture, join a working group or committee, chair a meeting or an election to an international council. It may follow a significant award, a landmark project, a byline or publication that travels, a board appointment, or simply a growing recognition among peers. The moment she begins to shine too brightly, the harvest begins.

TPS has, for years, existed anecdotally. It was like the wind. People felt it, knew it was there, observed it ruffling their clothes – and other people’s feathers – but it couldn’t be captured for its ephemeral nature. Then Dr Rumeet Billan and Women of Influence dug in. The Tallest Poppy study, the first international research project of its kind, surveyed 4,710 women across 103 countries in 2023. Nearly 9 in 10 respondents (86.8 per cent) reported experiencing the syndrome at work: being penalised, resented, undermined, or diminished because of their achievements. Not despite their achievements. Because of them.

Women said:

“My boss told me that I need to play it small because I’m making others uncomfortable.”

 “My boss told me that my ambition annoys him, so he chooses to ignore it.”

“I was openly promised a promotion to the C-Suite and then later told I was too outwardly ambitious/excited for the opportunity, and not promoted. I’m completely checked out, embarrassed, and looking for new jobs now.”

 “I think it’s mostly out of fear and protection — fear that I want people’s jobs and could do them better if I tried; protection for themselves and their roles because I am viewed as a threat.”

The costs were not imaginary. Over 85 per cent reported heightened stress; nearly three-quarters reported that their mental health had suffered. And the study surfaced a finding that should end a lazy narrative for good. The popular story holds that women are their own worst enemies, forever pulling each other down. The data disproves that. Men in leadership positions were the most likely to penalise or undermine women for their success. Women did cut, but mostly sideways, at peers. It seems when denied a chance to grab at higher branches, people learn to compete viciously for the low ones.

The most unfortunate finding, though, is what women do next. They disengage from projects. They hold back in meetings. They hide their achievements. They shrink. The tall poppy develops a stoop, taking with her a generation of leadership talent.

The Paradox Of The Visibility Gospel

LinkedIn is notorious for preaching to women in leadership and leadership aspirants that they need to be visible. Books are written about it. Studies are done. The gospel has commandments: Build your personal brand. Post on LinkedIn. Take the keynote. Sit on the panel. Raise your hand. Take a seat at the table. Stop skirting the periphery of your career. Stand up and out. Women are repeatedly told competence alone will not cut it. That careers are built not on what you do, but on who knows what you do. Visibility is also how you get sponsorship, mentorship and access to the C-suite. It is how you get invites to closed rooms. How you tee off at golf. Where deals done in places no one tells you about, happen.

Two things can be true at once, and that, precisely, is the tangle of the web. Visibility is both the ladder and the lightning rod. The same platform that gets a woman noticed for the CIO role gets her noticed by everyone with a private inventory of reasons as to why she doesn’t deserve it. She is instructed to shine by the whole world then and punished for standing under the glare of a spotlight she has earned. She is told to take up space and then measured, constantly, for taking up too much.

The very same qualities that are toasted in her male peers such as confidence, assertion and self-advocacy are the very qualities for which women are fined.

The Tallest Poppy Study quotes one respondent’s boss as telling her to “play it small” because her success was making others uncomfortable. Another was informed that her hard work made everyone else look bad; another, that nobody would care about an announcement of her achievement because nobody cared what she did. And when women spoke up, the system closed ranks. Over 42 per cent were given no suggestion to take any action at all, nearly a quarter were advised to keep the complaint to themselves, and only 1 in 5 was encouraged to act. The ‘best’ response to a woman reporting that she was punished for excellence was, nothing.

While the study’s sample skews heavily North American via Canada and the US accounting for nearly 4 in 5 respondents drawing from a self-selected professional network rather than a random sample, it still describes the respondents’ world. The numbers may not map our workplaces precisely, but its findings resonate. The continent’s tech industry is a small world with a long memory. From Nairobi to Lagos and Johannesburg. Everyone knows everyone; reputations are set early and revised rarely. A woman who becomes “too visible” here is not just risking the resentment of colleagues.

She is risking the verdict of an entire ecosystem. It is delivered in boardrooms she might never walk into, playing out inside WhatsApp groups she will never see. Nor does the field end at the office gate: half of the study’s respondents — 49.7 per cent — reported the same hostility outside work, from friends, relatives, siblings, spouses and partners. Of course, this is compounded by the communal belief that no one is self-made. Success is something we own therefore a woman must exercise humility.

In What 60 Years of Data Reveals About How Men and Women Experience Leadership by Dwayne Whitten, Wendy R. Boswell and Susan Oldroyd, the Harvard Business Review delves into their 60-year-old study tracking women in leadership. Their 2026 study is a refresh that unfortunately indicates how things have deteriorated. 20 years ago, men and women answered nearly identically when asked whether women are judged more critically in executive roles, with approximately 35 per cent of each group agreeing. Today, men still answer at 35 per cent. Women answer at 90 per cent, revealing a significant judgment gap between male and female executives.

And, 83 per cent of women believe they must be more exceptional than men to succeed, compared with 28 per cent of men. In 2006, 68 per cent of women and 32 per cent of men agreed with that sentiment. This second finding reflects what researchers call “prove-it-again” bias: a woman’s competence is presumed absent rather than present, demanding repeated demonstration that men are never asked to provide. Men are evaluated on potential; women on an established record. Men’s mistakes are absorbed into an overall favourable impression; women’s are catalogued.

The paradox here is in order for women to be seen as successful, they have to be seen. They have to demonstrate competence, an act that elevates their visibility. TPS then says women who achieve success – be that money, fame, or titles, then get punished, more often than not by men.

When The Answer Is The Problem

When the LinkedIn machinery pushes for self-advocacy, it says be visible, but forgets the addendum – do it strategically. Promote yourself, but tread softly. Lead, but be likeable. It is a genre of advice existing to help women find the perfect temperature. Be warm enough to be liked, cool enough to be respected, but not so hot as to burn. It creates a problem to a solution the woman did not need to grapple with then asks her to solve it by managing herself within parameters she didn’t set. Watch your tone. Check your timing. Pace your social media cadence. Look at your wardrobe.

And, not playing the game is not a choice. So here is how to play a rigged game with skill.

Redirect The Spotlight: What if you switched things up and changed tack? Women, according to the study, are penalised most sharply for self-promotion, but not so much for promoting ideas, missions, others or results. Be loud about the work: the migration that was delivered, the fraud numbers you cut, the platform you scaled, the young engineers you’ve grown. Let that steep, and build. Choose a form of prominence that the field finds harder to punish by being generous. There is less likelihood of coming across as performative.

Get Others To Say It For You: I see this with the most influential woman series. Colleagues, mentees and sponsors can speak on your behalf, raising your ‘voice,’ visibility and achievements in a tone that doesn’t scream self-promotion. Networks are activated – yes, you still have to do that bit of work – and stop being private cheerleading squads. What you can’t say in your own voice becomes amplified by someone who can’t be fined for bigging you up. But then you have to do it for another. What this does is it raises you and another, so you’re not the only rising poppy that becomes irresistible to the scythe. Isolation makes you vulnerable, and that turns you into a target. This is the beauty of networks and groups. They do for you what you can’t do for yourself, just by association.

Put It On Paper: No, you’re not crazy or paranoid. When you’re the tallest poppy, it helps to observe, notice then document instances where you’re being cut down to size. Remember, this is an honest-to-God phenomenon, so when you see it happening, fall back on the literature. You are not alone.

Of course, all this presumes you know where to draw that fine line between confidence and arrogance!

The Cost Of The Cut

The study locates the aggressors at every level: co-workers, clients, managers, executives, even professors, funders and recruiters, with men outnumbering women as the cutters even in categories where seniority cannot explain the skew, such as clients, suppliers and vendors. But there were women in every category, too.

The three solutions above still make this a tallest poppy problem. But that is not where the answers lie. Those belong on the field. To the CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, CHROs, CEOs, board chairs, and even women who survived the cut. Because the toll it takes is severe. 75 per cent of women said it affected their productivity at work. Half left the job where it happened. 50.4 per cent lost the appetite to apply for promotion at all. And 60.5 per cent believed they’d be penalised if so much as perceived as ambitious. It almost certainly rewards mediocrity. And the cost is talent.

McKinsey’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report noted how for the first time in the report’s 11-year history, a notable gap has sprung up between men and women in their desire for promotion. Not in commitment – the report is explicit that women’s drive is intact – but in the appetite to say yes to the next level. Crucially, the data shows the ambition gap dissolves when women receive the same career support and sponsorship as their male counterparts. This is part of that support. The one that continues to lift. Not the one that cuts.

Ultimately, for the tallest poppy to remain uncut, the company culture has to shift by reframing success instead of perceiving it as a threat. The European Heart Journal’s prescription may be written for medicine, but it is legible to any industry. That leaders recognise and support talent, reward innovation, create room for advancement, and nurture their tallest poppies into the leaders of the future. These towering poppies form the leadership pipeline, incidentally.

After years of interviewing technology leaders, I’ve learned one thing: raising people is the most important thing. Imagine then, raising an entire poppy field.