Lately I've been thinking about how often women are quietly pitted against each other at work. Not always out loud, not always intentionally, but subtly, through comparison, labels, and unspoken expectations. Two women in the public eye helped me see this more clearly than ever recently. They are none other than Taylor Swift and Victoria Beckham.
Same level of success, very different paths, and between them, a powerful lesson in masterclass for how we treat ourselves and each other at work. Because here's what I've realized. We've been sold a lie about what it means to be a strong woman in the workplace. When people say strong women, it often gets translated as hard women, and that's not strength, that's armor.
So today, we're talking about moving beyond comparison, competition, and quiet self-doubt. We're talking about the many ways to lead, the many ways to win, and why the narrow box we've been given isn't serving any of us. You're listening to the career pivot accelerator. I'm your host Peggy Mc Knight.
Let's dive in. If you've been in the workforce for more than five minutes, you've probably felt this attention at some point or another. Be visible, but not too visible, or your attention seeking. Be confident, but not too confident, or you're arrogant.
Be warm, but not too warm, or you're not taken seriously. Be strong, but not too strong, or you're a bully, you're a bossy, so on and so forth. We're having these impossible binaries, like there's only one right way to show up, one acceptable version of competence, and the truth is, the workplace loves simple labels. But people aren't simple.
I've watched women try to squeeze themselves into whatever mold they think will make them safe, or get promoted, or be seen, make them liked, make them enough. But women lead loudly, some lead quietly, the son or storytellers, some are strategists, some light of a room, some anchor it, and we've been taught to see these as opposing forces. Like, one way is right, and the other is, well, suspect, wrong. Not good enough.
But here's what I want you to hear today. The problem isn't strong women. It's narrow definitions of strength. And when we buy into those narrow definitions, we do something really damaging.
We start seeing other women's strengths as threats. We start comparing, competing, quietly undermining. Not because we're bad people, but because we've been conditioned to believe there's only room for one type of woman at the top. So, before we go any further, I want to break that myth wide open.
Let me show you two women who prove there's more than one way to win. Data Swift and Victoria Beckham. If you've asked me a few years ago to compare them, I probably would have thought one of them had a comment apart from singing, being on stage performing. But actually, they have a lot more in common, and it includes everything.
Both built empires, both face relentless scrutiny. Both had to fight to be taken seriously in industries that didn't always respect them. And the way they led, completely different. And that's the point.
Let's start with Taylor. Taylor Swift leads through connection, storytelling, and emotional fluency. How refreshing. She doesn't just release music.
She creates experiences. She speaks directly to her audience. She's visible, present, vulnerable in public ways. For a long time, that visibility was used against her.
She was called dramatic, attention-seeking, too much. But here's what Taylor did. She reclaimed the narrative before others could distort it. She turned her so-called weakness, her openness, her emotion, into her greatest strategic asset.
And now, well, now, she's one of the most powerful business women in the world. So here's what I want you to take from Taylor's lens. Visibility can be strategic, not attention-seeking. If you're strength is connection, storytelling, bringing people along, that's not fluff.
That's leadership. No to apologize for it, and don't let anyone convince you it's less valuable than the quiet behind the scene approach. Now, let's talk about Victoria Beckham. Victoria leads through discipline, restraint, and long-term mastery.
She doesn't explain herself much. She doesn't overshare. She doesn't need you to like her. She just shows up, does the work, and lets the outcomes speak.
Her years, she was dismissed as just a spice girl, or just a father's wife. But she's built a respected fashion empire through quiet, relentless commitment. No fanfare, no justification, just excellence over time. And here's what Victoria's approach teaches us.
You don't have to explain yourself to build credibility. If your strength is focused, mastery, letting your work do the talking, that's not cold, that's powerful. You don't owe anyone a performance of warmth to deserve respect. So here's the truth.
Niagara approach is better. They're just different tools for different seasons. Some seasons call for visibility, for rallying people, for being the face of the vision. Other seasons, they call for credibility, for heads-down work, for building something that will outlast the noise.
You get to choose which season you're in, and here's the key. You don't have to tear down the other approach, or other people to validate your own. Taylor doesn't have to be too much for Victoria to be taken seriously. He can leave Victoria doesn't have to be too cold for Taylor to be strategic.
They're both winning, just differently. And the same is true for you. Okay, now we need to talk about the harder part, because as much as I'd love to say, we're all supporting each other and celebrating different paths. Yay, that's not always happening.
And I think we need to be honest about it. Call it out for what it is. Here's what I've seen, and maybe you've seen it too. Women quietly comparing themselves to other women, keeping score.
Gossip disguised as concerned. You know, they, I'm just worried about her comments. Complaining is bonding, where the only way connect is to tear someone else down. And quite undermining to feel safer or superior, with holding information or work from others.
Look, I'm not here to shame anyone, because here's what I've learned. Most of this isn't cruelty. It's insecurity playing defense. Let's talk about the labels.
You know the ones I mean. You may have heard them in the past or recently. The ones where labeled women labeled in negative ways, like battle acts, bossy, aggressive, ice queen, bully. These are are the words we use for women who lead with strength, especially women who don't perform warmth the way we expect them to.
And I've got to be honest with you. I myself have judged women this way in the past. I've worked with plenty of women who came across as overly aggressive, very sharp, hard to approach. And my first instinct is, I just want to keep my distance, right?
Maybe even complain about them to somebody else. Not cool, but I learned. Then sometimes there's circumstance, sometimes through curiosity of myself. I got to know them.
And you know what I found with all of these types of women labeled in a negative way? It was all in front. It was their armor trying to protect themselves from getting hurt. Because here's what no one talks about.
Workplaces have made women feel ashamed of softness. If you cry, oh, you're too emotional. There's no crying in the office. If you show vulnerability, you're weak.
If you admit, you don't know something. Oh, well, you must not be confident. You don't know anything. So some women do learn to harden, to put up walls, to lead with sharpness because it feels safer than leading with openness and just being themselves.
And that's not strength. That's survival. When people play strong women, I don't think it's translated as hard women. And that's not strength.
That's armor. Real strength. It's being able to show up as yourself, whether that soft, sharp, loud, quiet, emotional or soic without needing to perform someone else's version of acceptable. So why do we do this to each other?
Why do we compare, compete, undermine? Because we've been conditioned to believe there's only one way and only one room for us as women. One woman at the top, one woman who gets the promotion, one woman who gets respected. And if she's winning, then somehow, bye or someone else must be losing.
But that's the lie. You advancing doesn't take anything away from me or any of our other women colleagues. Her being visible doesn't make my credibility less valuable. Her choosing a different path doesn't invalidate mine.
But it does take real courage to believe that because the culture we're operating in doesn't make it easy. So here's what I want you to know. You don't have to participate. You don't have to join the gossip.
You don't have to bond through complaining. You don't have to shrink yourself to make others comfortable. And this is important. You don't have to correct anyone else's behavior either.
You can just opt out quietly, gracefully. You can opt out and still advance. In fact, you'll probably advance faster when you stop wasting energy on comparison and competition. Because here's the truth.
Your power multiplies when you stop measuring yourself against other women and start aligning with your own strengths and talents. All right, let's bring this home with something practical, something we can really get our hands on. Because awareness is great, but I want you to walk away from this episode with something you can use. So I'm going to give you three reflection questions.
And I want you to sit with them, really sit with them, and maybe bring out a journal and really reflect on these questions. Think about them on your commute, but don't rush past them. This is a big one. Are you trying to be the loud visible leader because that's what you think leadership looks like, even though it drains you?
Are you forcing yourself to be the quiet behind the scenes operator because you think being visible makes you too much, even though connection is your superpower? You can admire somebody's leadership style without trying to copy it. Taylor and Victoria aren't trying to be each other. And you don't have to be either of them.
You just have to be the most aligned version of yourself. So question one again, am I trying to lead like someone else instead of like myself? Question two, is this a season for visibility or a season for credibility? Here's what I mean.
Some seasons of your career call for visibility. You need to be seen. You need to build your network, share your ideas, raise your hand, take up space. Other seasons call for credibility.
You need to go deep, master your craft, build your expertise, let the work speak before you do. And some seasons, you're in a great both, but you can't do everything all the time. So ask yourself, what does this season call for? And then here's the key.
Give yourself permission to focus there without guilt. If you're an in a credibility season and someone else is more visible than you, that's okay. You're playing a different game right now. If you're in a visibility season and someone criticizes you for being too much, that's okay too.
You're doing what this season requires of you and what feels right. Different seasons, different strategies, both valid. Think of Taylor and Victoria's careers. Taylor doesn't always go on being visible throughout the year, throughout the decades, throughout her eras.
She's visible when is necessary, like with her world tours. Similarly with Victoria, she's visible when she is ready to launch a new line for the summer season or the winter collection or the spring collection. She's not always on stage or letting her models display their different types of clothing for that season. Everything calls for something at the right time.
So again, question two, is this a season for visibility or a season for credibility? Question three, where am I wasting energy comparing instead of building? This one might sting a little bit, but it's important. Where are you spending your time?
Are you scrolling someone's LinkedIn and feeling an adequate, analyzing why she got the opportunity and you didn't, keeping score of who's is more successful, more liked, more respected. That is energy and it's not neutral. Every minute you spend comparing is a minute you're not spending building. I get it.
Comparison feels like research. You're like learning what works, but most of the time it's just making you feel small or quite frankly miserable. So here's your challenge. For the next week, every time you catch yourself comparing, redirect, ask instead what's one thing I can do today to build my own path.
That's where your power is. I want to say this slowly because it matters. Your power multiplies when you stop measuring yourself against other women and start aligning with your own strengths. Not because competition is bad, not because ambition is wrong, but because you can't build a life that feels true to you while using somebody else's blueprint and the women who really win, they're the ones who build careers that are sustainable, fulfilling and authentic.
They're the ones who figured out what their version of success really looks like and stop apologizing for it. Before we close, I want to zoom out for a moment because this isn't just about human your career. This is about what we're building for the women who come after us. Every time you choose not to participate in comparison culture, you're creating space for someone else who leads differently.
Every time you refuse to armor up just because the workplace expects it, you're showing another woman she doesn't have to be either. Every time you celebrate another woman's success instead of feeling threatened by it, you're proving that there really is room for all of us. And I know I know this is hard because the system wasn't built for us to succeed together. As women, it was built to keep us competing for scraps, but we don't have to accept that system.
Not anymore. We can redefine what strength looks like, not hard, not armored, not sharp, but steady, authentic, multifaceted. Strength can be soft, it can be loud, it can be quiet. Strength can look like vulnerability, like discipline, like joy, like restraint.
There's more than one way to be strong, more than one way to lead, more than one way to win. And the sooner we believe that, really believe that. The freer we all become. All right, let's bring it home.
You don't need to harden to succeed. You don't need to compete to matter. You do not need to dim someone else to make room for yourself. There is more than one way way to lead, more than one way to be respected, more than one way to win.
And your job is to figure out what your way looks like and stop apologizing for it. If this episode resonated with you, I've created a free reflection guide to help you identify your leadership season, whether you're in a visibility phase, a credibility phase, or integrating both. It includes the three reflection questions we covered today, a leadership strengths assessment and prompts to help you align your next career move with who you actually are, not who you think you should be. You'll find a link in the show notes.
It's completely free. Go grab it. And if you know another woman who's been quietly comparing herself at work, who's been trying to lead like someone else, or just needs to hear that she's enough exactly as she is, send this episode her way. Because the more of us who opt out of comparison culture and the more we change what's possible for all of us is amazing.
Thanks for being here. Thanks for giving the hard work of leading authentically. And remember, there's more than one way to win. I'll see you next time.