The Structural Gap in Leadership Models
I have spent more than two decades inside corporate leadership systems, often as the only woman around the table, advising CEOs, driving enterprise strategy, and designing leadership teams and leadership development programs across industries and geographies.
Over that time, I began to notice a pattern that repeated itself with striking consistency. Leadership models were evolving to address market volatility, digital transformation, geopolitical instability, and organizational complexity. Yet there was one reality that remained entirely unaccounted for.
There is not a single leadership program designed for what leadership asks of women during the menopausal transition.
This absence is not intentional. It is structural. Every leadership model in use today rests on a foundational assumption: that a leader’s internal capacity remains stable or even increases as external demands rise. For millions of women in leadership, that assumption does not hold.
The Redistribution of Effort
During perimenopause and menopause, leaders are navigating physiological changes that can affect energy regulation, cognitive clarity, and emotional bandwidth. At the same time, they are often operating at the peak of their responsibility, visibility, and organizational consequence. The external environment does not recalibrate to accommodate this internal transition. Expectations remain constant. Strategic stakes remain high. Leadership demand continues to accelerate.
The result is not a collapse of leadership capability. It is a redistribution of effort:
- Decision-making may require greater cognitive expenditure.
- Sustained focus becomes more intentional.
- Energy allocation becomes more deliberate.
- Recovery becomes structurally necessary to maintain performance at the same level.
Yet none of this is reflected in how leadership performance is assessed or supported. Our systems assume linear capacity in a non-linear reality.
A Leadership Systems Issue
Because these shifts do not manifest as overt underperformance, they often go unrecognized. There are no formal signals, no governance triggers, no organizational responses. And yet they influence leadership continuity, the very outcome most organizations are working to protect.
This is why menopause should not be positioned as a wellbeing issue. It is a leadership systems issue. When leadership models fail to account for internal capacity, they do not merely underserve individual leaders. They miscalculate leadership risk.
Modernizing the Infrastructure
The work required is therefore not about fixing women. It is about modernizing leadership systems for the reality they already depend on. Leadership infrastructure does more than develop capability. It defines what kinds of capacity are assumed, what kinds of pressure are normalized, and what forms of adaptation remain invisible.
A modern leadership system would treat internal capacity as a strategic variable, not a private matter, but a factor directly linked to leadership sustainability and enterprise risk management.
The organizations that recognize this shift early will not simply improve inclusion outcomes. They will protect leadership continuity at its most consequential levels. They will retain institutional judgment, preserve decision integrity, and sustain leadership presence precisely when complexity is highest.