Why Ambition and Authenticity Aren’t Opposites

Redefining What Success Looks Like for Women Leaders

Ambition and authenticity are not opposites. They feel like opposites because women have been handed a definition of success that was never built around who they are. Redefining success — on your own terms, rooted in your own values — is not a retreat from ambition. It is the most ambitious thing you can do.

There is a tension that lives quietly in many high-achieving women. On one side: the drive to achieve, to grow, to lead, to matter at a scale beyond what they currently inhabit. On the other: a deep commitment to being real, to leading with integrity, to not becoming someone they do not recognise in the pursuit of success.

Most of the time, she manages this tension by keeping it private. She is ambitious at work and authentic at home, or she is authentic in conversation and strategic in the room, or she is reaching for the next level while quietly wondering whether getting there will require her to give up something she cannot name but knows she does not want to lose.

The underlying belief driving all of this is one that very few women say out loud, but most recognise immediately when they hear it:

To be truly ambitious, I will have to stop being truly myself.

This belief is not irrational. It was formed by watching what success has historically looked like — in organisations, in industries, in the culture — and concluding, reasonably, that the version on offer was not made for her. And she is right. The dominant model of success was not made for her. But the answer is not to abandon the ambition. It is to refuse the model.

Where the belief comes from

The idea that ambition and authenticity are in conflict is not a personal neurosis. It is a logical response to a specific cultural and organisational context.

The dominant narrative of professional success — still, in most organisations, in most industries — was built around a particular archetype: assertive, decisive, status-driven, willing to prioritise career above all competing claims. This archetype is not neutral. It was shaped by a workforce in which women were largely absent from leadership, and in which the qualities most associated with feminine socialization — relational depth, emotional attunement, collaborative instinct, care — were considered soft at best, liabilities at worst.

When women enter this structure, they face a choice that men rarely have to confront: lead in a way that feels authentic but risks being perceived as insufficiently serious, or lead in a way that earns credibility but requires a daily performance of something other than who they are.

Professor Herminia Ibarra of London Business School names this the ‘authenticity paradox’ — the experience of being told to ‘be yourself’ in an environment that was not designed with your self in mind.¹ Her research found that women in particular can be constrained by an overly rigid definition of authenticity: one that ties them to a past version of themselves rather than allowing the evolution that genuine leadership growth requires. The trap is not ambition. It is a definition of authenticity that makes growth feel like betrayal.

The solution is not to abandon authenticity. It is to understand it more accurately: not as a fixed state to be defended, but as a living practice of knowing what you genuinely value and leading from there — even as you grow, change, and become more than you were.

What the false choice is actually costing

The belief that ambition requires inauthenticity has real and measurable consequences.

It creates a ceiling made of internal permission rather than external barrier. McKinsey research consistently shows that women’s representation drops most sharply at the transition from individual contributor to manager, and again at the transition into senior leadership — not because their capability drops, but because their willingness to pursue advancement in the form it is currently offered narrows.² When the version of success on offer does not match who you are, and you believe that mismatch is fixed, stepping back looks like wisdom rather than loss.

It also creates a particular form of exhaustion: the energy cost of managing the gap between what you want and what you believe is permissible to want. She wants the promotion, but she is not supposed to want it too visibly. She wants the recognition, but asking for it feels self-serving. She wants to lead at a larger scale, but something about the way that ambition is expressed in her environment feels incompatible with the person she is trying to be. The management of this gap — the constant calibration of how much ambition to show and how much to suppress — is among the most draining features of professional life for high-achieving women.

And it limits the world, not just the individual. The women who stay small to stay authentic do not become less ambitious. They become invisible. And the leadership those women could have offered — with their values intact, their relational intelligence fully deployed, their particular way of seeing the world present in the conversations that shape it — simply does not happen.

What it means to redefine success

Redefining success is not lowering the bar. It is setting a different one — one built around impact, integrity, and a life that is genuinely yours.

The women who have resolved this tension — not by suppressing the ambition and not by abandoning the authenticity, but by refusing the false choice between them — tend to describe the shift in similar terms. It is not that they stopped caring about achievement. It is that they got clearer about what achievement they were actually reaching for.

They stopped measuring success against an external standard built by and for someone else, and started measuring it against an internal one: Am I growing? Am I leading in a way that reflects my values? Am I creating something that matters, in a way that I am proud of? Am I building a life that is both full and real?

What this looks like in practice:

• Success includes, but is not limited to, titles and money. Women who have redefined success on their own terms do not stop caring about advancement, compensation, or recognition. They continue to care about all of these things. But they carry them differently — as markers on a path they have chosen, not as proof of worth they are still seeking. The promotion means something because it comes with expanded impact, not because it closes the gap between who she is and who she is supposed to be.
• Authenticity is not a fixed state — it is a practice. Ibarra’s research is useful here: authenticity is not about never changing or never adapting. It is about staying rooted in genuine values while growing into a larger version of yourself. The woman who gives herself permission to evolve — to try new ways of leading, to stretch into territory that feels uncomfortable, to become more than she currently is — is not being inauthentic. She is being genuinely ambitious in the deepest sense.
• Ambition in service of something larger is more sustainable than ambition in service of the self. Manasi, a Shenomics programme alumna leading five teams, described this shift precisely: ‘When I go after things now, I go after them more wholeheartedly. After a point, it’s really not the outcomes that matter. Just the fact that you’re doing something meaningful makes all the difference.’ Ambition anchored in purpose — in what she is building for the people around her, for the women coming after her, for the impact she wants to make in the world — does not diminish. It deepens.
• Being a role model is itself a form of ambitious leadership. The ICA who has resolved this tension becomes, often without intending to, the woman that younger women watch and draw permission from. She is living proof that the choice they have been told is inevitable — ambition or authenticity, success or selfhood — is a false one. That proof is not incidental. It is one of the most powerful things she can offer the world.

The shift that makes it possible

None of this happens by reframing the belief in a single moment. It happens through a gradual and deliberate process of building the inner authority to lead from who you actually are, rather than from who the environment expects you to be.

That process requires, at its core, three things: enough self-knowledge to be clear on what you genuinely value; enough inner resilience to hold that clarity under the pressure of environments that will push you toward performing something else; and enough courage to let your ambition be visible — not in the language of the dominant model, but in your own language, shaped by your own values, in service of your own vision of what matters.

Sonali, who left a successful institutional career to build something entirely her own, described it this way: ‘I was extremely lonely. The women in the workplace I was in didn’t have the aspirations I have, and the men were in the rooms that mattered. The Shenomics programme gave me a community that finally reflected what I was reaching for.’ The ambition was always there. What changed was the permission to inhabit it — fully, visibly, without apology.

You do not have to choose between being ambitious and being yourself. The most powerful version of your leadership is the one that refuses that choice entirely.

The world does not need more women who have learned to lead like men. It does not need more women who have abandoned their values at the door in exchange for a seat at the table that was built without them in mind.

It needs women who have done the harder and more important work: of becoming so clear about who they are and what they are here to do that the question of whether ambition and authenticity can coexist becomes, finally, irrelevant. Because they are simply the same thing.

About the Author

Bhavna Toor is the founder of Shenomics, a conscious leadership platform for high-achieving women. Shenomics works with women across India and globally to develop the inner mastery and outer leadership capabilities that turn ambition into real-world impact.

Explore programmes and resources at shenomics.com

References & Further Reading

[1]  Ibarra, H. “The Authenticity Paradox”  Harvard Business Review, January–February 2015 — on the trap of rigid self-definition and what authentic leadership actually requires.

[2]  McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. “Women in the Workplace 2024”  McKinsey & Company, 2024 — broken rung and pipeline drop-off data.

[3]  Ibarra, H., Ely, R. & Kolb, D. “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers”  Harvard Business Review, 2013 — on second-generation bias and why conventional success models disadvantage women.

[4]  Tulshyan, R. & Burey, J. “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome”  Harvard Business Review, 2021.

[5]  Ibarra, H. “Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader”  Harvard Business Review Press, 2015 — on identity evolution as a prerequisite for leadership growth.

[6]  Catalyst. “The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership”  Catalyst.org, 2007, updated 2024.

[7]  McKinsey & Company. “Centered Leadership: How Talented Women Thrive”  Harvard Business Review, 2008 — purpose and meaning as drivers of sustainable leadership effectiveness in women.

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