We teach women how to lead teams, negotiate, build networks, find sponsors, communicate with authority and develop executive presence.
But there is another dimension of leadership development that we rarely talk about: becoming financially surefooted.
I don’t mean financial literacy in the traditional sense. I mean something broader: understanding the economics of your own life and career well enough to make consequential professional decisions from a position of strength.
Can I afford to take this risk? What is my equity actually worth? What am I giving up if I leave? Can I take six months between roles? Should I negotiate for more salary, more equity or greater flexibility? What would it mean financially to start my own company? At what point have I accumulated enough financial independence that my next professional decision no longer needs to be primarily about compensation?
These sound like financial questions.
They are also leadership questions.
Money Changes the Choices Available to Us
For years, leadership development has appropriately focused on helping women navigate the structural and interpersonal barriers that can impede advancement. Those barriers remain very real.
McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace research continues to document the persistent gap in women’s representation at senior levels, as well as the “broken rung” early in the leadership pipeline, where women remain less likely than men to make that first promotion into management.
The response has been an enormous and important investment in mentorship, sponsorship, executive coaching, networking, negotiation and leadership development.
But something is missing from that curriculum.
We rarely help women understand how the financial decisions they make alongside their professional decisions can expand or constrain the choices available to them later.
There is evidence that these worlds are more connected than we might assume. Research examining financial literacy and employment negotiations has found that financial confidence is associated with a greater willingness to negotiate, while financial knowledge is associated with making more competitive first offers.
That connection deserves more attention.
Financial capability isn’t simply what happens after someone builds a successful career.
It can help make that career possible.
From Financial Literacy to Financial Agency
I prefer the term “financial surefootedness” because this isn’t about knowing every answer.
It is about knowing enough to ask the right questions, understanding the implications of the choices in front of you and having the confidence to participate fully in decisions involving your own money.
There is still a measurable gender gap in financial knowledge. Research from the TIAA Institute and Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center has consistently found differences between men and women on measures of financial literacy.
But we should be careful about turning statistics like these into another story about what women lack.
Other research suggests that the confidence gap can narrow significantly when women are actively engaged in financial decision-making and have access to advice and resources.
The opportunity, then, is not to “fix women.”
It is to make financial capability part of the infrastructure we provide women as they build careers and lives.
Financial Surefootedness Changes at Every Career Stage
Years ago, when I taught a course called Project Worth, we looked at women’s professional and financial development across three broad stages: launch, mid-career and executive transition.
I’ve come to believe that framework belongs inside the larger conversation about women’s leadership.
At launch, learn the economics of your career.
The early years are not only about getting the job and earning the promotion. They are when compensation decisions begin compounding.
Understand your benefits package. Negotiate your first salary. Participate in a retirement plan. Learn how equity compensation works. Invest rather than simply save. Know which skills and experiences will increase your future earning power.
These are not separate from career development. They are part of it.
At mid-career, build financial agency.
This may be the stage when financial surefootedness matters most.
Careers and lives become more complicated at precisely the same time. Compensation may include bonuses, restricted stock, options or carried interest. Children, aging parents, mortgages and competing careers enter the equation. A woman may be considering a leadership opportunity, entrepreneurship, relocation or a career interruption.
Research on women’s career negotiations suggests that advancement involves far more than compensation. Women negotiate roles, workloads, developmental opportunities, flexibility, and work-family conflicts as they navigate their careers.
Financial clarity gives those negotiations context.
The question shifts from “Can I ask for this?” to “What does this choice mean for my life, and what can I afford to choose?”
At executive transition, convert success into choice.
Eventually, the equation changes again.
After decades of accumulating experience, relationships, compensation and hopefully wealth, the question becomes less about how to advance and more about what that success enables.
Another CEO role? A board portfolio? Entrepreneurship? Philanthropy? Investing? A sabbatical? More time with family? Retirement?
The ultimate dividend of financial surefootedness is optionality.
It is the ability to make your next decision because it is what you want to do, not simply because it is what you need to do.
What If Financial Surefootedness Were Part of Leadership Development?
Employers already understand that financial wellbeing affects the workplace. Research has linked financial insecurity with employee stress and reduced productivity, while studies of workplace benefits show that women report significant financial stress and place considerable value on employer support for financial wellbeing.
But what if we went further?
Imagine a women’s executive-development program that included not just executive presence, mentorship, sponsorship and negotiation, but also understanding compensation and equity, building personal financial resilience, evaluating the economics of career transitions and ultimately translating professional success into financial independence.
Not because women need another remedial course. Because leaders make better decisions when they understand the resources, risks and tradeoffs available to them. And because the freedom to make a bold professional choice often depends on having the financial foundation to make it possible.
We have spent decades teaching women how to become more powerful inside organizations. The next evolution should include helping women understand the economic power they are building along the way.
At every stage of a woman’s career, money quietly shapes the size of the choices available to her.
Financial surefootedness isn’t simply an outcome of leadership success. It is one of the things that makes leadership, independence, and choice possible.
It’s time we started teaching it that way.
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