BY antoinette GYAN
There is a version of you that you have not yet permitted yourself to be.
I see it in almost every professional I coach — often before they see it themselves. The experience is there. The track record is there. The intelligence, the commitment, the results — all present and accounted for.
And yet there is a ceiling.
Not in the organisational chart.
Not in HR’s promotion criteria.
It lives somewhere deeper and more personal — in the private commentary running in the background of their working life.
The one that says: not yet. Not quite. Not me.
The story you tell yourself about what you are capable of will always outrun the truth — in either direction. The question is which story you have chosen to believe.
The stories we inherit
We do not arrive at our professional lives with blank slates.
We carry every message we have ever received about our intelligence, our belonging, our right to occupy certain spaces.
Some of us were told — directly or indirectly — that ambition is dangerous.
That visible success invites envy.
That people from where we come from do not sit at those tables, and if we do, we must not draw too much attention.
Some of us grew up watching people who looked like us absent from rooms where decisions were made, and drew the only conclusion the data seemed to support: perhaps those rooms are not for us.
These stories shape what we apply for, what we speak up about, and what we believe we deserve.
And most of us carry them without ever having consciously examined them.
The readiness gap
A widely cited Hewlett-Packard study found that men apply for a role when they meet 60percent of the qualifications. Women apply only when they meet 100percent.⁸ This is not about confidence as a personality trait. It is a belief — held deep and not always consciously — about who advancement is really for.
In the African professional context, where class, gender, educational pedigree, and networks intersect in complex ways, this pattern carries additional weight. For many professionals, not reaching for something is not laziness — it is a rational response to a pattern of evidence collected over a career.
The problem is that evidence can lie.
Especially, evidence collected in environments not designed with you in mind.
What mindset actually means
I want to be careful here, because mindset has become a word used to place the entire burden of structural inequity on the individual. “Just believe in yourself” is not a career strategy, and I have no patience for advice that tells undervalued professionals their only obstacle is attitude.
What I mean is this: there are real structural barriers, and there are also real internal ones. Unlike the structural ones, the internal ones are yours to address. You cannot single-handedly dismantle the systems that make certain paths harder. But you can examine the stories you tell yourself inside those systems — and decide which ones still serve you.
The professional who waits to be good enough before asking for the promotion was often good enough two years ago. The one who does not negotiate his salary because people like him don’t do that — he heard something, somewhere, that was never true.
Those stories are not facts.
They are inherited scripts.
And scripts can be rewritten.
Three questions worth sitting with
What would you attempt if you already believed you were ready? Not when you have the extra qualification or the perfect moment. Now. As you are.
Whose voice is the loudest critic in your head — and did they ever actually know you? The harshest assessments we carry are often from people who saw us at our smallest. Their voices have staying power. But they are not prophecy.
What has the fear of being wrong cost you more than being wrong itself? The proposal was not submitted. The stretch role was not applied for. The cost of not trying is invisible — the status quo simply continues. But it is real, and it compounds.
A final word
The career development conversations that matter most are not always about skills or strategy. Sometimes they are about sitting with the narrative you have been living inside — and questioning it rigorously.
You are more prepared than you think. More capable than the evidence suggests. The ceiling is real — but it is also something you have the power to move.
References
- Hewlett Packard Internal Report, cited in Sandberg, Sheryl — Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, 2013
Antoinette Gyan, APR is an Internal Communication Consultant and Leadership Communication Coach – Lead Consultant at Araba Africa and Founder of YSA Global . Contact: [email protected] | www.araba-africa.com
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