The Rooted Leader: Self-Leadership as a Strategic Advantage for Women in STEM
To take the next step in leadership, Anna Frebel, Ph.D., discusses why women leaders must first pause and decide where they want to go — and who they want to be when they get there.
The boundaries of STEM are shifting. Increasingly, we are recognizing the evolution to STEMM — acknowledging medicine, alongside mathematics, as a central pillar of innovation. From cardiovascular research to veterinary science, disciplines are converging, new roles are emerging, and expectations are rising.
Yet as these opportunities expand, a familiar pattern remains: many highly capable women pause before stepping into the most visible, strategic positions.
This pause is often described as a confidence issue or a pipeline problem. I see it differently. In the leadership course I teach, I have found that the hesitation is not about ability. It is about stability.
For more than a decade, women in technical fields have been told to “lean in.” I agree — but only if you are rooted. Leaning into leadership without being grounded in who you are is destabilizing.
When you are encouraged to lean without a foundation, your instincts correctly sense the risk. You don’t lead; you wobble. Without strong roots, leaning too far puts you at risk of falling, or worse, failing. Before you can lead a lab, a clinic, or a technology organization, you have to make sure you understand the biggest roadblocks. That work begins with what I call leadership of self.
Here are the five shifts that help women in emerging STEM fields expand their goalposts and step forward with grounding rather than hesitation.
1. Exploring Limiting Beliefs
When I ask women to write down the beliefs that are limiting them in their careers, they initially worry they won’t be able to come up with more than a couple. Then, their pens start moving, and their pages start filling up, and before long, they have a list of 20 or more: I’m not capable. I don’t think I can lead this project. I can’t do math. My bosses will be angry if they find out I’m looking to advance in my career.
Some of these limiting beliefs have been with us since childhood. Others are the result of women being told, explicitly or not, that they should second-guess their own abilities. Wherever they come from, these beliefs are within us now but that doesn’t make them true. And once we realize that we’re the ones putting obstacles in our own way, it becomes much easier to remove them.
2. Expanding Ambitions
Men who start companies often have big, bold, and at-times unrealistic dreams for their business. While these audacious goals may or may not be achieved, they tend to spur action and investment in a way that more modest aims do not. Women, by contrast, often cap their own ambitions without even realizing it.
By the end of our time working together, the women in my course come to see that there is much more room for them to run than they previously thought. We work on “moving the goalposts” further away and to some exciting new heights, ensuring that our own unwillingness to think big isn’t what narrows our leadership paths.
3. Sharpening Decisions
Because of fear, people tend to default to the status quo, which seems safer than alternatives — even if those alternatives come with more opportunity, money, or prestige. That reaction is not a character flaw; that’s how we’re wired.
It takes only a few seconds — a deliberate pause — for the reactive part of the brain to give way to more thoughtful judgment. In that pause, we regain agency.
I often tell participants: give your brain two options. The old response and a new one. If you see only one path, you will take it automatically. If you see too many, you will feel paralyzed. But with two, you can choose deliberately, and hence move forward much more strategically.
4. Refining Language
Women’s contributions are more likely to be devalued, and many of us tend to focus on the area where we’ve come up short. During the course, I literally give participants permission to say, “I’ve done well.” Many have never said this to themselves before.
Another linguistic shift: We often have difficulty saying “no” to people, but it is easier to say “not now.” A simple sentence like “This doesn’t work for me right now, but can you ask me again next year?” can be extremely powerful in helping women reclaim their time.
5. Making Leadership a Daily Practice
I didn’t coin this phrase (Ronald Heifetz, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School did), but I love it: “Leadership is a practice, not a position of authority.” When we think of leadership as something we undertake each day, we can move beyond the mythology of the natural born leader and take ownership of our own journeys.
I often compare it to running. No one practices for a marathon by running marathons. Instead, people gradually build up their longer runs over time and compete in shorter races, until they’re ready to conquer 26.2 miles.
The Path Forward
Ultimately, the goal of this work is to change the internal physics of how we show up in the workplace. When you are grounded, you no longer have to fake” confidence; you simply possess it because you are standing on a foundation you built yourself, brick by brick.
By making leadership a daily practice, you transform the wobble of hesitation into the steady, flexible resilience of the palm tree. In the rapidly evolving landscape of STEMM, we don’t just need more women at the top, we need women who are rooted enough to stay there and lead the way for the next generation of innovators.
