The Passion Penalty: What Happens When Women Show the Same Drive as Men?

I came across a piece of research recently that has been in my head ever since, partly because it put language around something I think a lot of women will recognise instinctively.

Imagine a man and a woman working in the same organisation. They are performing at roughly the same level, they both care about their work, they both want to progress and they both show visible enthusiasm for what they do.

In other words, they are both passionate.

You would think that would work in both of their favour. We talk constantly about wanting people who care, people with energy, people who bring ideas, and people who are motivated enough to push things forward. Passion is usually treated as a positive signal. Right?

But research on what I’m calling the “passion penalty” suggests that it is not necessarily interpreted in the same way depending on who is showing it.

The study, Passion Penalizes Women and Advantages Men in High-Potential Designations, found that men were more likely than women to be identified as high potential even when their performance and passion were similar. The researchers found that men were around 20% to 30% more likely to receive a high-potential designation, and one of the most interesting findings was that visible passion could give men an additional advantage because it made them appear more diligent, committed and likely to work hard.

Women did not receive the same benefit.

In some cases, visible passion could even work against them because it was more likely to be interpreted as emotionality, or as somehow less appropriate for leadership.

As a passionate woman, this really made me think.

I am naturally enthusiastic. When I care about something, people know about it. I talk with my hands, I get animated, I ask questions, I get excited about ideas and, if I think something matters, I am not particularly good at pretending otherwise. I have always seen that as part of who I am and, for the most part, as a strength.

So of course I started wondering how often that same quality might have been read differently depending on who was looking at me. Maybe as commitment, energy, intensity or even “too much” by some people.

That is the part of the research I find difficult to shake, because it raises a much bigger question about the way we think about women’s leadership development.

We keep telling women to change how they show up

A huge amount of women’s leadership advice is still focused on what women need to do differently. Speak up more. Be more visible. Put yourself forward. Show confidence. Own your achievements. Be ambitious. Self-promote. Communicate with conviction.

There is nothing inherently wrong with helping people develop those skills. I do some of that work myself, and plenty of women want support with confidence, visibility and communication because those things genuinely matter. But research like this makes the limitations of that approach very obvious.

What happens if we encourage women to be more visible and passionate while the people evaluating them are still interpreting those behaviours through a different lens?

You can tell a woman to speak with more conviction, but you cannot guarantee that someone else will not experience that conviction as aggression. You can encourage her to be more ambitious, but you cannot guarantee that her ambition will be interpreted as positively as a man’s. You can tell her to show more passion, but if his passion makes him look hardworking and hers makes her look emotional, we have not solved the problem. We have simply asked her to navigate it more skilfully.

And I think women have done enough navigating.

At some point, organisations have to become much more interested in how they are interpreting the behaviour in front of them, not just in how women are presenting themselves.

The passion penalty is particularly interesting to me because the behaviour itself does not necessarily change. What changes is the meaning we attach to it. A man becomes animated about an idea and we might think, “He really cares about this.” A woman becomes equally animated and somebody may think, “She is getting a bit emotional.”

A man pushes hard for an opportunity and can look ambitious. A woman pushes hard and risks being seen as difficult. A man speaks with certainty and may be described as decisive, while a woman doing the same thing can be experienced as abrasive.

None of these judgements has to be conscious or malicious. In many ways, that is what makes the problem harder. Most people genuinely believe they are looking at the individual in front of them and making a fair judgement, but those judgements do not happen in a vacuum. They sit inside much older expectations about what leadership looks like and how men and women are supposed to behave.

The double bind has not gone away

We have known for a long time that women in leadership can end up caught between two sets of expectations. Leadership has traditionally been associated with qualities such as assertiveness, decisiveness, ambition and authority, while women have historically been expected to be warm, agreeable, relational and accommodating.

That creates an awkward balancing act.

If a woman behaves in ways that fit traditional expectations of femininity, she may be liked but not necessarily seen as leadership material. If she behaves in ways that fit more traditional expectations of leadership, she may be seen as competent but less likeable.

Most women I know will recognise some version of this, even if they have never consciously named it.

How direct can I be without seeming harsh? How confident can I sound without looking arrogant? Should I challenge this? Should I soften that sentence? Should I add a smiley face to make sure the message does not sound too blunt?

We often talk about those things as communication choices, but I think we underestimate how much energy women can spend calibrating themselves against a moving target.

Perhaps passion is just another behaviour caught inside that same double bind. We say we want people who care, who bring energy and who are invested in what they do, but women may not always be given the same freedom to express those qualities.

What really got me was who benefited most

One of the most interesting findings in the study was that passion appeared to be particularly helpful for men whose performance was good, but not exceptional.

That is important because it suggests that visible enthusiasm can operate almost like a bonus signal. A man does not necessarily have to be the very strongest performer if his passion leads people to believe he will work hard, grow into a bigger role or has something extra.

That can shift how potential is judged, and potential is where things become very subjective.

Performance, at least in theory, asks what somebody has done. Did they deliver the work? Hit the target? Lead the project? Solve the problem?

Potential asks something much harder: what do we think this person might be capable of doing next?

Could she lead at the next level? Could he handle more complexity? Does she have executive presence? Does he have the drive? Would she inspire confidence? Does he look ready?

Those are not purely evidence-based questions. They require interpretation, instinct and imagination, which means they are much more vulnerable to bias.

I sometimes think “potential” is one of the least objective words in talent management, despite how confidently organisations use it. Potential is essentially a prediction about the future. We are looking at someone now and imagining who they could become.

That matters because our internal picture of leadership has been shaped by who we have historically seen in senior roles. If those leaders have tended to look and behave a certain way, then somebody who fits that pattern may feel more naturally “ready”, while somebody who does not may require more evidence.

This is why high-potential programmes need some scrutiny, not because they are inherently problematic, but because they can create compounding advantage very quickly.

Once someone is identified as high potential, they may get access to a leadership programme, a sponsor, a stretch assignment, more visibility with senior leaders or a bigger project. Those opportunities then generate more evidence that the original judgement was correct, and the cycle continues.

The person who was not selected does not get the same opportunities to prove what she might have been capable of.

A small judgement at one point in a career can therefore have consequences years later, which is why something as seemingly trivial as how we interpret someone’s enthusiasm actually matters.

The word “too” does a lot of damage

This research also made me think about the amount of feedback women receive that contains some version of the word too.

Too emotional. Too ambitious. Too direct. Too intense. Too outspoken. Too confident. Too sensitive. Too much.

I find that fascinating because “too” suggests that somewhere there is a correct amount. There is apparently an ideal level of assertiveness where a woman is strong but never intimidating, an ideal level of ambition where she wants to progress but does not seem self-interested, and an ideal level of emotion where she appears human but never loses composure.

Now perhaps there is also an ideal level of passion.

Enough to seem committed, but not enough that somebody starts describing her as intense.

The difficulty is that this line is not fixed. It moves depending on who is being judged, who is doing the judging and what they already believe leadership should look like.

That is also why subjective feedback can be so difficult to act on. If someone tells you your presentation lacked clarity, you can work on that. If they tell you that you are “a bit much”, what exactly are you supposed to change?

Your personality? Your energy? Your ambition? Your joie de vivre? The space you take up?

I think this is how women can become very skilled at self-editing and sensoring.

Sometimes caution is learned

We talk endlessly about the confidence gap. Women do not put themselves forward enough. Women do not negotiate enough. Women wait until they meet all the criteria. Women need to believe in themselves more…

There is truth in some of that research, but I think we often talk about women’s confidence as if it exists separately from their experience.

Imagine spending years receiving subtle feedback that tells you your natural behaviour needs adjusting. You are too direct, so you soften. Too emotional, so you become more controlled. Too ambitious, so you make sure everybody knows you are a team player. Too intense, so you tone down your enthusiasm.

Eventually, you become more cautious.

Then somebody observes that caution and tells you that you need to be more confident.

There is something absurd about that cycle.

What looks like a lack of confidence can sometimes be learned calibration. It can be the result of years spent figuring out exactly how much of yourself is acceptable in a particular environment.

Of course that will not explain every woman’s confidence struggles, and I would never pretend it does. But I think it is worth asking what a person has learned from the reactions and environment around her before assuming the answer is another workshop on confidence.

I do not want women to become less passionate

This is probably the most important thing for me.

I really do not want the takeaway from this research to be that women need to tone themselves down.

There is already so much pressure on women to be palatable at work, to manage tone, manage perception, manage emotion and manage everybody else’s comfort. The last thing we need is another rule telling women to be enthusiastic, but only in a carefully measured and non-threatening way.

Passion is not the problem. The interpretation is.

If a woman cares deeply about her work, let her care deeply about it. If she becomes animated about an idea, perhaps we do not immediately need to regulate her down. If she speaks with conviction, perhaps the first question should not be whether she needs to soften, but whether we would have the same reaction if the person speaking were a man.

That feels like a much more useful place to put our attention.

Where this gets practical is in talent decisions

The research is interesting academically, but where it really matters is in ordinary organisational conversations.

The succession meeting. The talent review. The shortlist for a leadership programme. The conversation about who is ready for promotion. The manager saying, “There is just something about him. I think he has real potential.”

That sort of language should make us curious.

What exactly is the “something”? What did he do? What evidence are we using? Would we describe the same behaviour in the same way if it came from somebody else?

I do not think the answer is to eliminate judgement from talent decisions. That is impossible. Human beings are making the decisions, and human beings interpret. But we can make those interpretations work harder.

If someone is described as emotional, what behaviour are we actually talking about? If someone lacks gravitas, what does that mean? If someone is described as passionate, why is that a positive signal in this case? If a woman is “not quite ready”, what specifically is missing, and would we require the same evidence from a man?

The vaguer the language, the easier it is for stereotypes to sit underneath it unnoticed.

The same applies to ideas like “executive presence”. I find myself increasingly suspicious of that phrase because it sounds important while often meaning different things to different people. Usually it becomes some mixture of confidence, composure, communication style, authority and the sense that someone looks comfortable in leadership.

But comfortable according to whose standard?

If our idea of leadership presence has been built from decades of watching mostly male leaders, then we should at least be open to the possibility that some of what feels naturally “leader-like” is simply familiar.

That does not mean standards disappear. It means we get more precise.

Can this person make good decisions? Can they influence others? Can they handle complexity? Can they build trust? Can they communicate clearly? Can they learn? Can they lead people through uncertainty?

Those are much more useful questions than whether somebody vaguely feels senior enough.

We cannot keep solving every gender gap with another programme for women

There is a pattern I see in organisations.

A gender gap appears and the immediate response is to create something for women. Confidence training. Mentoring. Leadership development. Visibility workshops. Networking programmes.

Again, these things can be genuinely useful. I am not against them. But we need to get better at asking whether the intervention is aimed at the right part of the system.

If women are less likely to be identified as high potential because the same behaviours are interpreted differently, then a programme teaching women how to demonstrate potential more effectively is only one part of the answer.

The people making the judgement need development too. The process needs attention. The criteria need attention. The language being used in calibration meetings needs attention.

Otherwise we become incredibly sophisticated at helping women operate inside biased systems while leaving the systems largely untouched.

That is not enough.

There is a wellbeing cost as well

I also think there is a human cost to all of this that gets missed.

Constant self-monitoring is exhausting. I’d go a step further and say it’s a contributing factor to the high rates of burnout we’re seeing in women.

If somebody has to spend a significant part of her working day calculating how she is being perceived, that mental effort sits alongside the actual job. How do I phrase this? Am I coming across too strong? Should I soften this? Was I too emotional in that meeting? Did I sound ambitious or arrogant? Was I enthusiastic or annoying?

That is a form of labour organisations rarely see.

If women consistently feel that there is a narrow behavioural window in which they can be both respected and liked, it shapes how safe it feels to lead authentically.

Some women will keep navigating it. Some will become exceptionally good at it. Others may eventually decide they cannot be bothered anymore and go somewhere else, step back, or stop putting themselves forward.

For organisations that say they want more women in leadership, that should matter.

Maybe women are not showing up wrong

That is probably the thought I keep returning to.

We spend an extraordinary amount of time asking women to adjust how they show up. Then research like this reminds us that women can do those things and still have the behaviour interpreted through a different lens.

So perhaps the question is not always what women need to change. Perhaps organisations need to become much more interested in how they are seeing women in the first place.

I am still going to be passionate. I would find it impossible not to be and I know the importance of staying true to your values and authentic self.

And I hope other women do not read research like this and decide that the safest option is to become quieter, flatter or less expressive.

What I hope happens instead is that organisations start asking harder questions about the decisions that shape careers. Who gets described as high potential? Whose enthusiasm is seen as evidence of commitment? Whose ambition is welcomed? Whose confidence is admired? And whose behaviour is still being judged against a narrower set of expectations?

Because passion should not be evidence of potential when it comes from him and evidence of emotionality when it comes from her. And if that is happening, the problem is not that women need another lesson in how to lead.

The problem sits with the lens.

Want to take a closer look at how women progress in your organisation?

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References

He, J. C., Jachimowicz, J. M., & Moore, C. (2024). Passion penalizes women and advantages (unexceptional) men in high-potential designations. Organization Science, 36(4), 1438–1465. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.18018