Balance & Beyond

The 3 Leadership Traps Keeping Women Stuck

• Jo Stone • Season 3 • Episode 90

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Ever wondered why working harder isn't getting you ahead? Despite your exceptional output, strategic thinking, and dedication, do you find yourself passed over for opportunities while watching others progress with seemingly half the effort?

In this eye-opening exploration of leadership barriers, we dive deep into the three invisible traps keeping ambitious women stuck in cycles of burnout and career stagnation. The "workhorse trap" might be the most dangerous—that childhood-instilled belief that if you just work hard enough, someone will eventually notice and reward you. We unpack how this industrial-era mindset actively prevents your progression into strategic leadership roles while fueling exhaustion.

The "perfectionism paradox" compounds this problem, creating a crippling cycle where you're both drowning in tasks and spending disproportionate time on details that ultimately don't matter. Rather than appearing thorough, this often damages your reputation by making you seem slow, defensive about feedback, and unable to prioritize effectively. Meanwhile, the "permission loop" keeps you waiting to be tapped on the shoulder while others advocate for themselves. This explains why women typically wait until they can fulfill 85-90% of job requirements before applying, while men will confidently apply with just 25%. 

Breaking these cycles doesn't require working harder—it requires working differently. By recognizing these traps and choosing to step out of them, you can accelerate your leadership journey, reclaim your strategic voice, and create success without sacrificing your wellbeing. Ready to write yourself a permission slip for the leadership role you know you deserve? This episode provides the blueprint for breaking free.

To view the Transcript from this week's episode, visit our Balance & Beyond Podcast webpage: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast/2025/90

Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself!

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Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!

Jo:

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your terms. I honor the space you've created for yourself today, so let's take a breath and dive right in. Today we're talking about leadership, and I am seeing so many women stuck in these three traps again and again and again. It's happening at the junior levels and, more concerningly, it's happening as women progress. So let's dive in about what is going on here and how, by escaping these traps, you can find yourself moving into more elevated areas and levels of leadership where you're really able to reach your full potential. The first trap that I see women fall into is a deep embedded identity that, for many of us, comes from childhood. It's come from our parents, and it is exhausting and a key driver of burnout. We call this the workhorse trap, or also known as the get shit done trap trap, or also known as the get shit done trap. This is where we have this belief that if I do everything, if I do all the work. If I do all the things and I never stop, then that's going to buy me influence, that's going to get me recognition, that's going to get me progressed. If I just have a hard work ethic, like I've been taught from my parents, then I'll be successful. And yet woman after woman who is doing all the things, who is working really hard, crazy hours, churning out a huge volume of work and output bigger than most people usually holding multiple roles is passed over for promotion for somebody else who's working half as much is not given the big project or the next opportunity because she's suddenly become indispensable and can't be taken off this thing that is draining and that she isn't enjoying because she's stuck in this workhorse mentality. We've been led down this garden path thanks to our parents' well-meaning, I guess you would say, advice and what they were told you know put your head down, work hard, get a good job. Eventually you'll earn enough money, you can contribute to the family and you'll have a great life. And that may have been the case when we were all making widgets and we were all in a factory and it was about how many widgets you could produce every hour. That was initially where we were trading that time for dollars and it was all about how many widgets per hour could we produce. And obviously, the harder we work, the more widgets every hour. This model is very much based on the old industrial revolution model, where it is a complete time for dollars exchange.

Jo:

And it can feel that way very early on in your career. You put your hand up, you say yes to opportunities, you work harder than somebody else and you do get rewarded for that. You do get given accolades, you're patted on the shoulder, you are given other opportunities. However, what we don't realize is this transition that we need to make, where we need to, at a certain point in our careers, stop being the workhorse. But what stops us doing this is these deeply ingrained beliefs that make it impossible to stop. If you believe that being busy makes you important which most women do and if you believe that if you put your head down and work hard, eventually somebody's going to notice and they're going to reward you, then you are never going to stop working, because then you don't believe that you're important.

Jo:

If you think that you have to work really hard Usually this comes with a lot of hustle mentality it should be hard, you have to push, you have to strive, because, again, we've been taught this and yet all that happens is that we are, by being so buried in the work, by being so stuck in the weeds and spending all our time putting out fires, we're never in the strategic work. We don't have time to be in that one meeting where we could have said the thing, because we've done the strategic work and we've had the space to think and improve something that then makes everybody else realize that we're management material or that we're CEO material or whatever it is that we know we're material for. And the biggest mistake so many women think is that if I just work harder, I'll get through this. When I've got through all the work, then I will have time for strategic thinking. When I get through this busy period, then I'll take a step back and I'll reflect and I'll be able to go and improve that process, or I'll be able to go and do that thing that's actually causing a lot of my fires right now, but it never comes. It never, ever, ever arrives, usually because of the next trade that we'll get to in a minute.

Jo:

However, if you want to step up, if you were feeling stuck from a leadership perspective and you resonate at all with being the workhorse, then until you change this identity, until you realize that being a workhorse has you trapped and burning out, you will never progress. And I know that's a big statement, but I have enough evidence now, having been in close proximity to hundreds of high achievers, that until they make this shift, they will stay stuck. What is really exciting is when you make the shift you can actually accelerate really really fast. So I have seen people who then take this push and hard work mentality into oh I'm going to be promoted and all these things. No, you don't actually have to. It gets to be easy. Sometimes things can happen without you pushing, when you know how to do that, when you know the right buttons and levers to push. So first trap I want you to escape is the workhorse trap.

Jo:

Part of what keeps you trapped in the workhorse trap that's a lot of traps is what we like to call the perfectionism paradox. To call the perfectionism paradox. Yes, our dear friend, perfectionism is back because it infiltrates so much of what you do. You stay trapped as the workhorse because you feel like everything has to be perfect. You feel like everything has to be flawless and, along with doing really hard work. You believe that you have to do a lot of work, a huge amount of volume, and just put your head down and it has to be done to an impeccable standard. It has to be done to a really, really, really high standard. What this does, when you add these two together, it's this crazy loop where you have a ton of work but you believe that you have to get everything done to an exceptionally high standard. And we're talking about you know you can't set a spreadsheet around unless it's all color coded and you know the cells are all aligned and there's. You know the lines are proper and this is a draft that's about to be hacked, but you spend 45 minutes formatting the spreadsheet because you want it to look pretty, because you have a mistaken belief that if a document is messy, that that reflects poorly on you, when in reality that's 45 minutes that you could have been spending on something that actually mattered.

Jo:

So perfectionism does not get you promoted. In actual fact, it usually inhibits you, because some of the traits of a perfectionist really really hold you back. So some of these traits that we see, and I guess, the implications for you as a leader or someone who wants to step up even further into leadership is your high standards that you think are your benchmark? And I can speak from a lot of personal experience here, because I used to be a perfectionist, a pretty hardcore one, and I was adamant that it was my high standards, it was that, my high quality of work, that were all behind my reputation, and that is true and and it also was hindering my reputation, particularly as a leader who could step up. Now I'm not suggesting before you go, but I can't be sloppy, joe, and yeah, that's going to damage. Yes, I hear you, but there is a difference as to when high standards really matter.

Jo:

But there is a difference as to when high standards really matter, because too often the high standards I have meant that I was finessing, fiddling and fart-assing around with things that didn't actually matter. What that did was it made me slow. It made me slow to get out a report because I was spending so long getting it up to my standard. You know PowerPoint, version 22, because the triangles didn't quite look as good as the octagons, and then the octagons should have been blue and not orange. In that time I could have circulated for feedback and realized that that page was going to be killed anyway. So I've just spent 45 minutes fiddling around with something that doesn't actually matter. So all of this lack of speed and all of this overthinking, not only does it damage your reputation, because these days it's all about speed, it causes a huge energy drain. It's really hard being a perfectionist, spotting all those mistakes. You know, tidying everything up, mopping up after everyone all the time. All those mistakes you're tidying everything up, mopping up after everyone all the time. And until you're able to put this down, then things won't change.

Jo:

Another trait that I see, particularly as it relates to a leadership perspective, is defensiveness, and this is usually because feedback that is given or criticism that is made of a project or a result, or an outcome or something has happened didn't meet expectations, and you take that on board. You take that incredibly personally and feel so responsible for what has happened. This overdeveloped sense of responsibility usually leads to you taking things very, very personally. This further fuels the perfectionist, because you tell yourself well, had I, you know, checked that report that seven other eyes saw, and had I known that this thing that I've never done before was about to happen, even though seven other eyes took it, I should have known. I should have known, I should have checked that. Yes, this is an exact conversation that I had with someone very senior yesterday. She believed that if she'd have caught something, even though she'd never done it before, and she was blaming herself because the client didn't quite get what they wanted, and yet seven other eyes saw it there was no worry about them, and yet it was this.

Jo:

I haven't done a good enough job. I should have saved it. I shouldn't have let this happen. So this fuels this cycle of well, I better take it all. I can't give it to anybody else because at least if I've done it all, then I can actually beat myself up more instead of having to delegate and worry about other people. Because the truth is, as you step up into leadership, you have to be more comfortable failing. You have to be more comfortable taking estimated guesses and punts and analyzing your risk and saying you know what, right now I'm making the best decision I can at the time. This is, I can recognize that there's some risks, but the rewards outweigh it. So we're going to go. And if next week we get new data shouldn't have done that, okay, not my fault. Now I know it better. Awesome, let's pivot. What can we do?

Jo:

But this perfectionism, the defensiveness, the high standards will really really hold you back and keep you stuck in this cycle, and everything you've been taught to get out of it actually just further fuels the cycle. Work harder, do more. Of course, we know that procrastination always comes with perfectionism. So this is another trait of the workhorse who's so overwhelmed, who doesn't know which next piece of work to do because there's so much on your list. You're paralyzed by picking which one to do, so you don't do anything and you find yourself looking at the 25 best Oscar dresses of all time down a God knows what social rabbit hole and suddenly 25 minutes is gone because you've blinked. This happens all the time. It's a huge energy leak and all you're doing is avoiding feelings. You're avoiding the shame or the fear or the guilt, and these feelings continue to chase you throughout the day and then usually bump into you about three o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep.

Jo:

So if you've ever been told you're not strategic enough, if you are spending too much time in the weeds, if you are buried in the detail, these are all signs that these traps are applying to you. I hate it when people throw around the you're not strategic enough comment, because they don't give women enough context as to what does that mean. And it's usually conditioning and these traps that have us stuck. It's not that we're not capable of the strategic work, it's not that we don't have strategic brains, it's we don't know how to let go of these identities and these compensatory behaviors that are keeping us trapped in places that we know are beneath us. And then the last trap is one of the ways that we need to break out, but it also keeps us going around and around in this loop of workhorse and perfectionism.

Jo:

And this is the permission loop. By this I mean we are usually, typically until we break this, heavily reliant on external validation from others. We look outside of ourselves for someone to say we've done a good job, or that we're right, or to back us up. I know one of the ways my permission loop used to run was I used to get a lot of collaboration and a lot of buy-in and a lot of feedback, and I used to justify to myself well, that's the culture, you know, that's how we work here. It's all about collaboration.

Jo:

But in truth, I was just covering my butt because I figured that, instead of backing myself and saying this is what I want to do. I would circulate it with everybody, which was a way of me getting permission from everybody to have my own ideas, even though all I would do would be to go out to everybody to get validation that my idea was a good one. And so all that does no surprise. It adds more work, because you spend all of this time getting buy-in and collaborating and, you know, ceasing the world. And, yes, that can be good, it can be a smart political move. But you have to ask yourself do I really need buy-in for this, or can I act and apologize later?

Jo:

And more often than not, the things that I was getting buy-in didn't need buy-in. They were me looking for validation. They were me looking for feedback. Of course I was doing a board paper. Of course I was going to circulate it. A big strategy that was going to impact five other departments. Of course, circulate, get buy-in, that's strategic, something within my own team, that's completely within my control, and I'm going out to two or three people to get their thoughts on.

Jo:

No, that's a lack of confidence, that's self-doubt, and I'm looking to the opinions of others to substitute my own voice, which should be there and when you add this belief that hard work will be rewarded, we often wait for that permission, that shoulder tap to say you're ready for a promotion or would you like this new opportunity, instead of getting it ourselves. There's very well-known stats. I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but something like men will apply to a job when they can do 25% of it, whereas women typically wait till they can do 85 or 90% of it, because we feel like we have to get permission, we want to be chosen, we want to be perfect for the job, because we're too afraid of rejection. We're too afraid to put ourselves out there and ask. It's no surprise in the 2025 data that came out about the gender pay gap that one of the biggest areas that the gap existed was yes, there's a base salary gap, but was in bonuses and sign-on bonuses and other incentives, because they usually require you to ask for them. They require you to negotiate, and if you're waiting there with your hand out saying, please, sir, can I have some more? Without strongly advocating for yourself, then it's never going to get given to you.

Jo:

I once got told very early on by one of my chairmen you know the whole Joe don't ask, don't get, and men don't hesitate to ask so why aren't you coming into my office demanding a pay rise or demanding a bonus or making sure that your bonus matches somebody else? And it never occurred to me that I had to. I almost had to get permission from a man early on in my career and I guess I was very like I got this to give myself permission. We see this with so many women who won't invest in themselves. They're going to their work to ask permission for them to do a leadership program. This happens all the time with women who want to come and work with us and they don't feel like they can invest in their own development. Work should be investing them in, and yes, that's true. But if you're the workhorse and the perfectionist, well, you're sort of irreplaceable and you can do the job of two people without whinging or asking. So why would I give you the funding for this? Well, they go to their husbands or their partners to seek permission because they don't believe that they can invest in themselves.

Jo:

There's a quote I saw recently from Julia Cameron which I think is just so beautiful and true. And what we sit with and it hurts like hell when the world won't invest in you, but it's excruciating almost more than you can bear when you don't believe and invest in yourself. So my question to you today is what do you have to do to escape the workhorse trap? How do you tame your perfectionist so that you can escape this paradox, and particularly the workhorse and the perfectionism? We've got to detangle them.

Jo:

It's all going to start with you breaking the permission loop with you stop looking to others to tell you what you can and can't do, where you can and can't put your time or your energy or your emotions or your money, and for you to take back that control, for you to decide what matters to you, for you to determine that you don't want to be stuck anymore. You make these shifts and, believe it or not, you can literally write yourself a permission slip and say I'm getting out of this loop. I do not. I no longer believe that I have to sit here and wait for someone to pat me on the head like a good girl and say well done. I'm going to go and ask for it. I'm going to no longer wait to be chosen. I'm going to strategically position myself to be the leader that I know I can be.

Jo:

You make these changes and, my goodness, you are going to break through in 2025. You're going to step up into leadership on levels that you never knew possible. Most importantly, let's ensure that you're getting your paid and you're earning your worth for everything that you can give to the world. So let's break out of the traps and not be stuck anymore. See you next time. Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today and, if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit balanceinstitutecom to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond podcast.

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Jo Stone

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