The articulation gap: why brilliant women go blank

She has led teams for 15 years.
Her LinkedIn says: "Director at ___." That's all.
Her WhatsApp status says more about her than that.

(She's a composite of women I meet in my work, so please don't go looking for her. You may know her though. You may be her.)

Ask her how she turned around a struggling team and she'll talk for forty minutes.
Ask her to write one post about it and she goes blank.

Seven years of ghostwriting has shown me this is where so many senior women get stuck. The thinking is all there. It has lived in meetings and corridors for years, so it never had to be written down for strangers.

I call this the articulation gap.

And the gap costs her. Someone with half her experience gets the panel invite, because his ideas are online and hers are in her head. If a restructure comes, nobody outside will even know what was lost.

When I wrote the book for a Chief of Staff at a global pharma company, we started with conversations. The chapters came later. I start every leader that way now.

Closing the gap takes three moves

1. Name it. Give one idea of yours a label people can remember.
2. Take a side. Say what you believe in your field. Say what you'd stop doing tomorrow.
3. Prove it with one moment. Tell one real decision and what you learnt from it.

Do this a few times and "Director at ___" starts to read like a person with a point of view.

I made a free workbook for exactly this. Get the Articulation Gap workbook and start with your first story today.