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By Che’ Blackmon Consulting
You walk into the boardroom with your proposal polished and your data airtight. You present with confidence—not too much, though, because you’ve learned that assertiveness can be misread as aggression. You speak firmly but make sure to smile. You advocate for your team while being careful not to seem too emotional. You lead decisively but check in constantly to avoid being labeled domineering.
Welcome to the double bind. 🎭
For women leaders—and especially Black women in corporate America—this isn’t just an occasional tightrope walk. It’s the everyday reality of leadership. You’re expected to be strong but not intimidating, confident but not arrogant, ambitious but not threatening, warm but not weak.
The contradictions are exhausting. And they’re costing organizations far more than they realize.
Understanding the Double Bind
The term “double bind” was popularized by researcher Marilyn Frye and further explored in organizational contexts by scholars like Kathleen Hall Jamieson. It describes a situation where women leaders face two conflicting sets of expectations: conform to traditional feminine stereotypes (be nurturing, collaborative, humble) or adopt conventionally masculine leadership traits (be decisive, assertive, competitive). Choose one path, and you’re criticized for not embodying the other. Try to balance both, and you’re seen as inauthentic or confusing.
Research from Catalyst found that women who behaved assertively were perceived as competent but not likable, while those who exhibited communal behavior were seen as likable but not competent. Men rarely face this trade-off. Their assertiveness is called leadership. Their confidence is called executive presence.
For Black women, this bind tightens even further.
The “angry Black woman” stereotype adds another layer of complexity that white women simply don’t navigate. A 2019 study published in Psychological Science found that Black women’s anger is more likely to be perceived as threatening and problematic compared to white women’s anger, which is often interpreted as justified or passionate. This means Black women leaders must manage not only gendered expectations but also racialized ones—performing a kind of emotional labor that remains largely invisible and uncompensated.
As I write in “Rise & Thrive: A Black Woman’s Blueprint for Leadership Excellence,” Black women leaders often become master code-switchers, adjusting tone, language, and even posture depending on the audience. This constant calibration is mentally and emotionally draining, yet it’s framed as a personal responsibility rather than an organizational failing.
The Real-World Impact 💼
Consider this scenario: There was a company that promoted a Black woman to VP of Operations after years of exemplary performance. Within months, she began receiving feedback that she was “too direct” in meetings and needed to “build more consensus.” When she adjusted her approach and spent more time gathering input before decisions, new feedback emerged: she was “indecisive” and “lacked executive presence.”
The goalposts kept moving because the real issue wasn’t her leadership style—it was that her leadership didn’t match the narrow, often white and male prototype people expected.
This isn’t rare. According to research from the Center for Talent Innovation, 57% of Black women in corporate settings report feeling “on guard” against potential bias. This hypervigilance takes a toll. It leads to burnout, disengagement, and ultimately, turnover. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace report consistently shows that Black women leave their companies at higher rates than any other demographic, often citing lack of advancement opportunities and exclusionary workplace cultures.
The double bind doesn’t just harm individuals—it undermines organizational effectiveness. When talented leaders must expend energy managing contradictory expectations instead of focusing on strategy and innovation, everyone loses.
How the Double Bind Shows Up
1. Communication Style Critiques 🗣️
Women leaders are told they’re “too aggressive” when they’re direct, yet “too soft” when they’re collaborative. Black women especially report being labeled “intimidating” for behaviors that would be praised as “executive presence” in white male colleagues.
2. The Likeability Penalty
Studies show that successful women are often perceived as less likable than successful men. For women leaders, this creates an impossible calculation: Do you prioritize being respected or being liked? And why should you have to choose?
3. Emotional Labor Expectations
Women leaders are expected to be the emotional caretakers of their teams—remembering birthdays, managing morale, smoothing over conflicts—while simultaneously demonstrating the “toughness” required for strategic decision-making. This emotional labor is rarely acknowledged in performance reviews or compensation discussions.
4. The Competence Assumption Gap
Research from Harvard Business Review shows that men are often hired and promoted based on potential, while women must prove their competence repeatedly. For Black women, this gap widens further due to stereotypes about intelligence and capability.
Breaking Free: Strategies for Individual Leaders
While systemic change is necessary, women leaders can adopt strategies to navigate the double bind more effectively:
Know Your Value 💎
Ground yourself in your accomplishments and expertise. Keep a “wins folder” documenting your achievements, positive feedback, and impact metrics. When contradictory feedback emerges, you’ll have concrete evidence of your capabilities. As I emphasize in “High-Value Leadership: Transforming Organizations Through Purposeful Culture,” leaders must anchor themselves in their values and vision rather than constantly adjusting to others’ perceptions.
Build Strategic Alliances
Identify sponsors (not just mentors) who will advocate for you in rooms where decisions are made. Research shows that women and people of color benefit significantly from having senior advocates who actively champion their advancement.
Name the Pattern
When you receive contradictory feedback, you can respectfully name it. “I’m hearing that I need to be both more collaborative and more decisive. Can you help me understand what that looks like in practice?” This moves the burden back to the feedback-giver to clarify their expectations.
Invest in Your Well-Being 🧘🏾♀️
Navigating the double bind is exhausting. Prioritize practices that restore your energy—whether that’s therapy, coaching, exercise, spiritual practice, or creative outlets. Your sustainability as a leader depends on it.
Document Everything
Keep records of your contributions, decisions, and feedback received. This protects you and provides evidence if patterns of bias emerge.
Organizational Solutions: Creating High-Value Cultures
Individual strategies are necessary, but insufficient. Organizations must address the structural and cultural factors that create double binds in the first place.
Audit Your Leadership Criteria 📊
What does “executive presence” actually mean in your organization? When leaders are described as “not ready,” what specific competencies are missing? Often, these criteria are subjective and unexamined, allowing bias to flourish. As I discuss in “Mastering a High-Value Company Culture,” high-value organizations are intentional about defining leadership in ways that are inclusive and competency-based rather than based on cultural fit with existing (often homogenous) leadership.
Standardize Performance Evaluation
Research shows that women’s performance reviews are more likely to include vague feedback and personality critiques, while men’s focus on specific achievements and actionable development areas. Implement structured evaluation processes that focus on measurable outcomes and behaviors.
Train Evaluators on Bias
Unconscious bias training alone isn’t enough, but when combined with systemic changes, it can help. Train those who evaluate and promote leaders to recognize how gendered and racialized stereotypes influence their perceptions. Use real examples from your organization.
Create Sponsorship Programs 🤝
Formalize sponsorship opportunities that connect high-potential women leaders—especially Black women and other women of color—with senior leaders who can advocate for their advancement. Hold sponsors accountable for outcomes, not just engagement.
Normalize Different Leadership Styles
Challenge the notion that there’s one “right” way to lead. Celebrate leaders who bring diverse approaches—collaborative and directive, analytical and intuitive, reserved and expressive. This expands what leadership can look like.
Address Emotional Labor
Make visible and valued the relationship-building, culture-shaping, and team-supporting work that women leaders disproportionately perform. Include it in job descriptions, performance criteria, and compensation decisions.
The Path Forward ✨
The double bind persists because it’s embedded in organizational cultures that were designed without women—and especially without Black women—in mind. Dismantling it requires more than policy changes. It requires cultural transformation.
This is the work at the heart of Che’ Blackmon Consulting. High-value company cultures don’t just tolerate diverse leaders; they’re redesigned to leverage the full range of human talent and leadership capability. They don’t ask women to contort themselves into narrow leadership prototypes. They expand the prototype.
When organizations commit to this work, the results are measurable: increased innovation, stronger employee engagement, better financial performance, and higher retention of top talent. Research from McKinsey shows that companies in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity are 36% more likely to outperform their peers financially.
But beyond the business case, there’s a human one. Every day that women leaders—and particularly Black women leaders—spend managing contradictory expectations is a day they’re not spending on the strategic, visionary, transformative work they’re capable of doing. That’s not just their loss. It’s everyone’s.
Discussion Questions 💭
- What contradictory expectations have you observed or experienced in your organization? How do they show up differently for different groups of leaders?
- In what ways does your organization’s definition of “leadership” or “executive presence” reflect a narrow prototype? What would a more inclusive definition include?
- How does your organization recognize and value the emotional labor that women leaders often perform? If it doesn’t, what would that look like?
- What specific actions could your leadership team take in the next 90 days to reduce the double bind for women leaders in your organization?
- For individual leaders: What strategies have you used to navigate contradictory expectations? What has worked, and what hasn’t?
Next Steps: Take Action Today 🚀
For Individual Leaders:
- Schedule time this week to update your “wins folder” and review your documented value
- Identify one potential sponsor and reach out to schedule a conversation
- Join or create a peer support network with other women leaders navigating similar challenges
For Organizational Leaders:
- Conduct an audit of your leadership competency criteria and performance review language
- Review promotion and compensation data disaggregated by gender and race
- Schedule a culture assessment to identify where double binds show up in your organization
For Everyone:
- Notice when contradictory feedback is being given and name the pattern
- Advocate for women leaders in your sphere of influence
- Commit to expanding your definition of what leadership looks like
Work With Che’ Blackmon Consulting
Are you ready to transform your organizational culture and create an environment where all leaders can thrive without navigating impossible contradictions?
Che’ Blackmon Consulting specializes in helping organizations build high-value cultures that unlock the full potential of diverse leadership. Through strategic consulting, leadership development, and cultural transformation initiatives, we partner with you to create sustainable change.
Whether you need help with:
- Executive leadership development
- Organizational culture assessments and transformation
- DEI strategy and implementation
- Women’s leadership programs
- Succession planning that works for everyone
We’re here to help you build something better.
Let’s talk.
📧 admin@cheblackmon.com
📞 888.369.7243
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The double bind isn’t inevitable. It’s a design flaw. And design flaws can be fixed.
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