The Transformative Power of Values Clarity for Accomplished Women
When you reconnect with what truly matters to you now, what becomes possible?
“Societies and businesses thrive when the feminine is empowered, bringing balance to overly masculine environments.”1
Senior women leaders in midlife face various challenges that impact their professional and personal lives. These challenges are multifaceted and often require tailored support and interventions from both peers and colleagues inside their organisation and sometimes beyond.
Key Challenges
Senior women leaders in male-dominated industries often face judgment about who they are and are sometimes mistaken for someone they’re not. This can create a disconnect between how they see themselves and how others see them. As they gain more experience and authority, this disconnect tends to lessen. (Meister et al., 2017).
Work-Life Balance and Emotional Health: Many midlife women report difficulties in balancing work and personal life, with significant emotional instability and physical discomfort. These issues are compounded by excessive job pressure and inadequate support systems (Qazi et al., 2024).
Microaggressions: Despite increased efforts by companies, women's day-to-day experiences have not improved significantly over the past decade. Women are more likely to face undermining comments and microaggressions, which can lead to burnout and decreased job satisfaction.
Microaggressions take a heavy toll. Women who experience them are more likely to feel burned out and to consider quitting their jobs and less likely to view their workplaces as equitable.
Career Advancement and Age Discrimination: Women in midlife often face barriers to career advancement, including age-related discrimination. This can affect job satisfaction and limit opportunities for growth (Qazi et al., 2024).
Cultural and Structural Barriers: In certain regions, such as Saudi Arabia, women leaders face structural challenges, lack of resources, and empowerment issues, which impede their effectiveness compared to male counterparts (Al-Ahmadi, 2011).
Transitions and Personal Challenges: Midlife transitions, such as menopause, divorce, and the ageing or death of parents, present significant personal challenges. These transitions can have long-term impacts on their professional lives (Dare, 2011).
Leadership and Risk: Women who rise to top leadership positions often find themselves in high-risk roles without adequate support, leading to shorter tenures compared to their male peers (Glass & Cook, 2016).
The Reality Behind the Success
In my work with senior women leaders in tech and consulting, I've witnessed these patterns repeatedly. These brilliant, capable women have built impressive careers and ticked all the boxes society told them to tick.
They're Associates, Partners, Directors, VPs, SVPs, and C-suite executives who've proven themselves time and again. Yet behind closed doors, many confess to feeling either exhausted, unfulfilled or overlooked (or some combination of these feelings).
As one client told me: "I feel like I've been climbing a ladder for 20 years, and now that I'm near the top, I'm realising it's leaning against the wrong wall. But it feels too late to start over."
The study found that work–life balance was not the primary factor in women’s decisions to leave. Instead, the women in the study reflected on their inability to be themselves and contribute perceived value to the organisation, which triggered their decisions to leave.2
Women face unique challenges during midlife, including:
Biological and psychological changes associated with menopause
"Empty nest syndrome" as children leave home
Increased caregiving responsibilities for ageing parents
These challenges can lead to women leaving organisations at higher rates than men in mid to senior levels
Values: The Missing Piece
At the heart of this disconnection often lies a values misalignment.
Your values are the deeply personal principles that capture what matters most to you and what you want your life to stand for. They guide how you want to show up in the world and the impact you wish to create.
The challenge is that values evolve. What drove you at 30 may not resonate at 50. The achievement, recognition, and security that might have been paramount early in your career may have shifted toward meaning, autonomy, creativity, or contribution and behaviours that are your expressions of these values.
When you continue to operate from outdated values – pursuing goals and making choices that no longer align with what truly matters to you now – the result is that pervasive sense that something is 'off'.
The Clarity Gap
Through countless conversations with accomplished women, I've identified a common pattern that I’ve come to call 'the clarity gap’.
This is the space between knowing something needs to change and understanding precisely what that change should be.
Many women leaders often describe it as feeling 'stuck in the fog' – aware of their dissatisfaction but unclear about the path forward.
"I know I'm not fulfilled in my current role," one senior director shared, "but I can't afford to throw away everything I've built. And honestly, I'm not even sure what would make me happy anymore."
This clarity gap isn't just about career direction – it's about reconnecting with yourself at a fundamental level. It's about rediscovering who you are now, what matters to you today, and how you want the next chapter of your life to unfold.
This is where values clarity can become helpful.
The Transformative Power of Values Clarity
Everything changes when you regain clarity about what truly matters to you now, not what mattered 20 years ago or what society thinks should matter.
Decisions become simpler.
Boundaries become clearer.
The uncertainty starts to dissipate.
The path forward emerges.
I've witnessed remarkable transformations when women reconnect with their values:
Nickie, a senior leader struggling with imposter syndrome and overwhelming confusion, moved to becoming grounded, calm and clear in just three months.
Eva discovered that by understanding her patterns and seeing situations more clearly, she could elevate her leadership to an entirely new level.
Liz found herself sorting through complex trauma and grief while simultaneously moving her life forward in alignment with her deepest values.
These transformations didn't happen because these women abandoned their achievements or threw away their hard-earned success. Rather, they redefined success on their terms, integrating their professional impact with personal meaning in a way that honoured both their capabilities and their deeper aspirations.
Consider Taking A Different Approach
Conventional career coaching often focuses on working with external factors – skills analysis, market opportunities, and networking strategies.
These have their place, but they miss the critical inner dimension.
When you're feeling that fundamental disconnection, no amount of skill-building or strategic career moves will address the root cause. You need a different approach – one that begins with reconnecting to yourself and what truly matters.
This is why I've developed the Values Clarity Scorecard – a free, practical tool designed specifically to help accomplished women understand where they stand in their values journey. It provides a snapshot of your current relationship with your values and identifies your next best steps toward greater alignment.
The scorecard explores your answers to the following questions:
How clearly can you articulate your core values?
How consistently do your daily choices align with those values?
How comfortable do you feel setting boundaries that protect your values?
How well does your professional life reflect what truly matters to you?
How energised or drained do you feel by your current work?
Your Invitation
If you're feeling that nagging sense that something is 'off' in your professional life, I invite you to take the Values Clarity Scorecard.
It takes less than 5 minutes to complete, and often provides immediate insight into where you stand and what might come next.
Beyond the scorecard, I'm creating a series of resources specifically designed to support accomplished women at various stages of the values journey:
A four-part podcast mini-series exploring what your Values Clarity Quiz score means and some suggested potential next steps
My free eBook, "LIVING TRUE: Reconnecting with Your Values in Midlife: A Guide for Accomplished Women" (coming soon)
Weekly insights through this newsletter, "Beyond The Gilded Cage"
My mission is simple: to enable accomplished women to choose work that lights them up and keeps them true to themselves, without sacrificing their hard-won success, taking unnecessary risks, or listening to the naysayers.
Because I firmly believe that our collective future depends on more women defining success on their terms rather than conforming to patriarchal expectations.
"If we are going to see real development in the world, then our best investment is women!" ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu
As both Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama have suggested, investing in women helps to create more balanced, compassionate communities and workplaces.
Are you ready to discover what becomes possible when you reconnect with what truly matters to you?
Take the Values Clarity Scorecard now and begin your journey to redefining success on your terms.
Frkal, R.A. and Criscione-Naylor, N. (2021), "Opt-out stories: women’s decisions to leave corporate leadership", Gender in Management, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-09-2019-0154