Women in Leadership
Converting leadership potential into organisational results
Leadership talent leakage costs organisations billions. Women in leadership is a strategic performance lever you can’t afford to ignore.
Contrary to common narrative, women are not stepping back from their careers because they lack ambition. They are stepping back from environments that don’t convert ambition into influence or progression.
The barriers are rarely capability-based. They are structural, cultural, and often invisible to those at the top:
Senior sponsorship and advocacy tends to run through homogenous networks
Visibility and high-impact work isn’t distributed evenly
High-performing women get stuck in delivery rather than strategy
Leadership readiness is judged on “proof” for women and “potential” for men
Succession and promotion cycles reward proximity over performance
When this dynamic compounds, organisations feel it before they see it: pipeline slows, retention drops, and leadership benches thin out.
The talent is there but the system just isn’t converting it.
The cost is real.
Across industries — particularly finance, tech, and professional services — organisations are experiencing slowed succession for critical roles, stalled leadership pipelines, shallow benches at VP and Director level, and increased attrition among high-performing mid-career women.
When this happens, innovation capacity drops, decision-making narrows, investor scrutiny increases, and culture and psychological safety begin to erode.
The UK alone loses an estimated £2–3.5 billion every year due to high-performing women leaving mid-career (Lovelace, 2025).
That figure doesn’t account for succession delays, replacement costs, lost innovation, or leadership disruption — all of which compound over time inside organisations.
For organisations competing for market share, talent, and investment, this is not a gender problem, it’s a strategic one.
The upside is undeniable.
When women progress into leadership roles, the upside compounds across the organisation commercially, culturally, and strategically.
Organisations with stronger female representation in leadership outperform in areas that matter commercially:
• +25% higher profitability
• +45% more revenue from innovation
• +30% stronger investor preference for diverse leadership
• increased resilience in volatile and complex markets
• higher engagement, collaboration, and retention across teams
• stronger succession and leadership readiness pipelines
• improved decision-making quality and risk management
These are measurable advantages that strengthen performance, accelerate innovation, and improve organisational resilience in the face of uncertainty.
Women in leadership is a performance lever — and one many organisations have yet to activate at scale.
Develop the leader. Activate the system. Measure the impact.
Most programmes focus on “fixing women”. We focus on evolving the systems that accelerate women into leadership.
Progression requires three things. This is what the Ascension Leadership Programme is designed to deliver:
Leadership development
Women in the programme build the capability to lead, influence, and drive outcomes across the organisation.
Participants develop:
• stronger strategic decision-making and judgement
• greater executive presence and communication effectiveness
• cross-functional collaboration and performance alignment
• ability to influence senior stakeholders and navigate complexity
• increased readiness for senior roles and succession opportunities
• broader enterprise and commercial awareness
Sponsorship and advocacy
Progression doesn’t happen in isolation. It relies on sponsorship, visibility, and advocacy from senior leaders.
Sponsors learn to:
• identify and champion high-potential women
• create visibility and stretch opportunities
• advocate in senior rooms where talent isn’t present
• accelerate succession and promotion cycles
• strengthen leadership culture and collaboration
• deploy influence to remove organisational bottlenecks that stall progression
Organisational outcomes
For leadership development to translate into progression, organisations need visibility on what’s changing, what’s improving, and where the system is still limiting progression.
Organisations gain:
• clearer succession and pipeline visibility
• improved promotion velocity for women leaders
• stronger retention of high-performing talent
• measurable uplift in leadership capability and execution
• accountability mechanisms for sponsors and decision-makers
• data to inform future talent and investment decisions
Why Ascension?
We’ve spent decades inside the organisations that grapple with this dynamic — from financial services and FinTech to accounting, law, and professional services. We’ve seen how progression works, where it stalls, and why talent leaks out of the system.
Progression stalls when capability, sponsorship, and organisational accountability sit in separate initiatives. We unify them.
That experience informs a methodology that integrates:
• leadership psychology and behavioural science
• strategic performance and executive coaching
• sponsorship, visibility, and advocacy ecosystems
• cultural and structural levers for organisational change
It’s an approach designed to convert development into performance for both the individual and the organisation. When the system works, organisations gain stronger succession pipelines, higher retention of high-performing talent, and faster promotion velocity, alongside improved innovation, profitability, and competitive resilience.
We design leadership systems that recognise excellence, accelerate progression, and convert it into organisational performance.
Who it’s designed for
The programme is designed for high-performing women at key inflection points in their leadership trajectory: from emerging leaders to mid-level and C-suite executives. Each cohort runs alongside a group of senior sponsors who hold decision-making authority over succession, promotion, and strategic opportunities.
How it’s delivered
Ascension runs as a 12-month cohort programme combining leadership development, sponsorship activation, and organisational measurement to ensure outcomes at the pipeline and performance level. The structure is flexible and can be adapted to different seniority bands and organisational needs, while maintaining the integrity of the core methodology.
