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It wasn’t until rather recently that I began to see myself as a leader in my field. Even though I made partner at 35, led complex cases and supervised teams of younger attorneys, paralegals, and other staff, I would not have described myself as a leader. While I recognized that I was at the top of the pyramid, so to speak, I saw that placement as a function of my legal abilities and seniority rather than my leadership skills.

I doubt that my experience is isolated among senior women in the legal profession. Our workplaces so rarely affix external labels of leadership on us. If you’re not on a key committee, not a part of your office’s designated “management,” or simply don’t have “managing” in front of your title, it’s understandable if you don’t see yourself as a leader.

A Major, Lindsay & Africa report [paywall] from earlier this year found that only 36% of female associates want to make partner. Most people interviewed about that report thought the finding was a function of workplace environments not conducive to work-life balance, and, since just about the same percentage of women saw themselves going in-house, perhaps that assumption is correct. But I think part of the reason women don’t want to become partners may also be that they can’t “see” themselves as partners in their firms. There aren’t enough women partners at the top to model what partnership looks like. There aren’t enough sponsors to show women how to make partnership their own. Leadership models in law firms are largely male.

Indeed, according to a new article [paywall] published in the MIT Sloan School of Management Review, when it comes to leadership, women have an “invisible misalignment between competence and identity.” It’s not imposter syndrome: it’s something much deeper than that.

In this week’s issue of Comes Now, we explore what the Sloan article concludes and how its findings are relevant to women lawyers.

The Leader-Identity Competence Paradox

A study which examined data from over 60,000 leaders through 360-degree reviews found that women outperformed men in 17 of 19 key leadership competencies. Those competencies included taking initiative, developing new capabilities, displaying high integrity and honesty, driving results, developing others, inspiring and motivating others, building relationships, collaborating and working effectively in teams, establishing stretch goals, and championing change. Women particularly excelled at self-development, integrity, and taking initiative.

Despite those overwhelming findings about women’s competence as leaders, a study authored by Julia Lee Cunningham, Sue Ashford, and Laura Sonday of the University of Michigan found that women are consistently less comfortable than men in applying the label of “leader” to themselves. Specifically, the authors surveyed 275 fulltime working adults and found that, while 32% of men demonstrated a strong leader identity, only 25.5% of women did. People with a “strong leader identity” were those who scored an average of 6 or higher on a 7-point scale in responding to four prompts:

1. I am a leader

2. I see myself as a leader

3. If I had to describe myself to others, I would include the word “leader”

4. I prefer being seen by others as a leader.

The authors also observed that the disparities between men and women in leader identity and leader aspirations seem to emerge later on in one’s career. Women’s confidence falls by half as they gain experience, while men’s confidence remains the same throughout their careers.

These findings have practical consequences for women. The more uncomfortable individuals are with the “leader” label, the less likely they are to see themselves as leaders and pursue leadership opportunities. In fact, the authors cite a study conducted by Alan Benson where he analyzed more than 10 million public LinkedIn profiles across various industries and job titles, controlling for job title, company, industry, and years of experience. He found that women were 16% less likely than men to report having leadership skills, even when they held the same title within the same company as male peers who reported having such skills. This, of course, can mean that recruiters will not identify women as potential candidates for positions requiring leadership skills.

How Organizations Can Bridge the Leader-Identity Gap

Given the above results, the authors recommended four steps that organizations can take to bridge the leader-identity gap.

Harness the Power of Narratives

The authors found that people who do not believe that leadership is innate and instead believe leadership can be developed and improved over time were less likely to believe that the act of leading might harm their image with others. They therefore recommended that employers promote a growth mindset culture around leadership, emphasizing that leadership skills can be developed and improved over time.

Employers can do this by sharing stories of leaders who grew into their roles, overcoming challenges along the way. They can also encourage leaders to share their own experiences of growth to normalize those feelings for others.

Focus on Leadership Behaviors, Not Labels

Because linguistic labels can reinforce the idea that identities are fixed and stable over time and that only certain individuals can rightfully adopt the label, employers can move reluctant women into leadership by focusing on behaviors involved in leadership.

The authors suggested that employers could do this by revising hiring processes, training programs, and performance reviews to focus on leadership behaviors rather than self-reported leadership. We should not be asking whether someone is a leader; we should be asking whether someone exhibits behaviors that a leader would exhibit.

Provide External Validation

Because women may be otherwise hesitant to adopt the label of a leader—and because people within an organization can hesitate to recognize women as leaders—organizations can provide this identity through external recognition or formal designation. These designations can even be project-based rather than permanent, so that women can begin to accept such roles more gradually. The authors also suggest that employers encourage managers to explicitly acknowledge leadership when it happens, regardless of an employee’s formal title or role.

Refine Leadership to Include Service-Oriented Behaviors

Finally, if organizations rethink their understanding of leadership by recognizing the value of traditionally underappreciated skills and tasks, more people will see themselves as leaders. For example, as we’ve discussed before, women often volunteer for tasks that are otherwise invisible to the organization. Framing this type of work as leadership—and rewarding these types of behaviors—makes it more valuable to the organization and contributes to the belief that people who do this work have leadership skills.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s easy to think that women don’t believe they are leaders they lack confidence or otherwise suffer from imposter syndrome. But, as with many other things, the real issue is that organizations fail to recognize leadership skills in women because they don’t look like male leadership. Many people also say that women aren’t ambitious rather than recognizing that women don’t work in places that nurture and support that ambition.

As we talked about last week, how we tell stories makes a big difference in how we see women’s achievements. Organizations can help tell different stories by broadening leadership to include mentoring, client development, and other skills annoyingly called “soft skills.” We don’t do this by talking about male leadership and female leadership—whatever those mean—we do that by broadening what we see as leadership so that it can include more people.

It’s telling that women view themselves as leaders less often as they grow older. That means their lack of belief or vision didn’t come from anything internally. It came from the organizations in which they worked.

So the next time you think a woman lawyer hasn’t stepped into a leadership role, ask yourself if you’ve called her a leader in the first place.

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