"Ready" is a feeling in your boss's head. Here's how to put it there.
Conventional wisdom tells candidates to get ready before they ask for anything. Pick up the skills the next position demands, enroll in the course, patch whatever holes sit in your record, and only once you can genuinely claim the qualifications, step forward. Earn the seat, then request it. Plenty of us were brought up on that approach, and there is real integrity in it.
Yet "ready" isn't something measurable about you. It is a mental image held by the person deciding, and the job tends to go to whoever already appears in that image, whether or not they are the most qualified.
1. Readiness is judged by resemblance, not by checklist
When a leadership group in Greensboro or High Point talks about who might move up, almost nobody reaches for a competency grid. They picture the person in the seat. Can they see her leading the all-hands meeting, handling the furious client call, or presenting to the board? If the answer is yes, she is ready. If not, she needs "a little more seasoning," which describes the observer's imagination far more than her track record. The Women in the Workplace 2025 report from McKinsey and LeanIn showed that women leaders are twice as likely to be mistaken for junior staff. When a room takes you for a junior person, it becomes much harder for that same room to recognize you as a senior one.
2. The checklist gets read differently by different people
Tara Mohr's research, published in Harvard Business Review, showed that women often pass on roles they feel underqualified for largely because they treat the posted requirements as hard rules. Men are more inclined to read the same list as a wish list. So the woman holds off until she meets every single line, while the man who meets six of ten applies, gets pictured in the role, and wins it. At the very moment she decided she wasn't ready, she was in fact more qualified.
3. The so-called ambition gap is different from how it looks on the surface.
That same McKinsey and LeanIn study found that 80 percent of women want a promotion, compared with 86 percent of men, and that the difference largely vanishes when women receive equal support. Women are not less driven. They simply get fewer opportunities to be seen performing the next job before they formally hold it, and being seen is how the mental picture gets built.
Where the old advice still holds true
Skills still carry real weight across the Triad, from Jamestown to Thomasville. A promotion into a job you cannot yet do is a glass cliff with a more flattering announcement. According to Russell Reynolds, women chief executives stay in post for an average of 5.2 years, while men stay for 8.1. It is a small sample, but the signal is pointed, and part of the explanation is that women are sometimes set up to struggle. So prepare. Just don't wait to be seen until the preparation feels finished.
A sounder method
Make yourself visible to decision-makers in the Triad before any opening appears. When your manager is out of the office, run the meeting she would normally chair. Present to her boss once a quarter on something that truly matters. After that, make the picture unmistakable by stating, "I want the VP role when it opens. Which signals would you need to see between now and then?" The reply gives you a working checklist, and it tends to be considerably briefer than the one you wrote on your own. Each month, finish one item from that list where the people who will be deciding can witness it, whether that is in a High Point or Summerfield meeting or elsewhere in the region. Resources like the Women's Business Center of The Triad at Bennett College or a local SCORE mentor can help you map that path.
When leaders in the Triad discuss the next VP, is your name a picture or a maybe?