This is the script for episode 123 of COMEBACK COACH (podcast) with Jessica Chivers, “Audacity at work: How to make audacious asks to accelerate your career and change corporate systems that weren’t built for women.”
Bozoma Saint John was standing on the corner of 105th Street and Broadway, Harlem when she took a call from her temping agency telling her filmmaker Spike Lee had just fired his assistant and he needed someone to answer his phone. She pitched up thinking she looked the part for the front desk: grey suit, pearl earrings, hair pulled back in a bun and when Spike walked in, he took one look and said “God damn, they sent me Miss America.” Unperturbed she clocked the folder under his arm and when he emerged from his office a litter while later she asked about the folder he was carrying under his arm. Knowing he was a director she rightly assumed it was a film script and she asked if he could read it. He gave it to her and you know what she did? She took a red pen to the script, marking changes in diction and comments for character development and gave it back to him two days later when Desmond Hall – the creative director working alongside Spike – was in the office. He shook his head.
The absolute audacity.
This 22 year old pre-med major working as a temp’ receptionist to Spike Lee had taken it upon herself to offer her view on something she knew nothing about and whilst Desmond was shaking his head, you know what Spike said?
“You made some good notes, you should stay.”
Fast-forward 25 years and Bozoma has been the Chief Marketing Officer of Netflix, the Chief Brand Officer at Uber and now the founder and CEO of her own business Eve by Boz. She’s proof that audacity can get us everywhere at work. In this episode of COMEBACK COACH I’m making the case for audacity being something every women needs to dial up in the corporate space.
I’m Jessica Chivers, a chartered coaching psychologist, author of “Mothers Work!” and executive coach who is on a mission to get more women into top jobs. I’m so pleased you’re here and listening to this JESSICA episode of COMEBACK COACH. These episodes are where I get into the psychology of something I think could be of value to the Bright Minds I coach in service of fuelling their careers. I don’t have my sound engineer Chris involved in these episodes so there’s no intro and outro music or polishing of the sound. If you’re looking for help returning to work after a break then please dig into to the massive library of COMEBACK episodes where you’ll find oodles of practical inspiration in the stories of my guests. You can also DM me your Qs on Instagram using the handle @comebackcommuk and if you are a Head of L&D, Head of Talent or Chief People Officer seeking coaching for returning employees take a look at our website www.talentkeepers.co.uk for the problems our Comeback Community employee experience programme solves. You’ll also get the lowdown on our approach to executive coaching for leaders facing pivotal career moments when being in the job they’re capable of isn’t straightforward.
One damp Monday last November I ran a session for HR professionals titled FIVE THINGS STOPPING WOMEN STEPPING UP THAT HR PROBABLY DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT. At the top of the session I flagged an article that had caught my eye on Forbes.com over the weekend with the headline “Why millions of women are choosing entrepreneurship in 2025”. The piece went onto say that between 2019 and 2023 the number of women–owned business in the US increased at nearly double the rate of men and quite simply that women are leaving traditional corporate roles in unprecedented numbers. Here in the UK, according to data from LinkedIn released a couple of weeks ago in their State of Women in Leadership, the number of women founders has been climbing since 2015, and the progress of women into top management roles has been slowing since 2023.
Globally, women’s overall share of senior leadership roles has barely shifted since 2022, rising just 0.1 percentage points to 31% in 2025 – far below the average pace of around 0.4 percentage points a year recorded from 2015 to 2022.
In the UK, women’s share of top leadership roles matched the global median of 31% in 2025, despite women making up 43% of the workforce. Across Europe, women’s representation in top roles varies significantly – from Finland’s 45% to Germany’s 22%, while France, Italy, Ireland and Spain are clustered just above 30%.
LinkedIn data also shows that women are still far more likely than men to step out of work for full-time parenting and those breaks can stack up into long-term barriers to leadership. In the UK, the “drop to the top” gap – the difference between women’s share of the overall workforce and their share of top leadership roles – widens sharply with age. The gap stands at 21% for Gen Z women, and jumps to 32% for Baby Boomers. It suggests that women accumulate the effects of slower promotions, career breaks and structural barriers over time, narrowing the path to senior roles.
I have worked with big businesses and bright women for over 20 years and despite the Women on Boards work and mandatory gender pay gap reporting in service of getting a fair balance of women and men in positions of power, not much has changed. Yes there’s been an increase in women sitting on the boards of businesses but this growth has been in non-executive roles, rather than women being the Chief Executive or chief financial officer. The FTSE Women Leaders Review that was published a few weeks ago reported 49.5% of FTSE 350 company non executive director roles are held by women but just 15.4% of executive roles in the FTSE 350 are filled by women. And it’s those executive roles that hold real power.
So where does audacity come into this?
I think one lever for change that is within our gift, that we are fully in control of, is to become more audacious in how we act and what we ask for at work in service of getting thousands more women to the top of businesses around the globe so that we can restructure workplaces to work for women as much as men.
4 out of 5 women will become mothers in the UK and the latest ONS statistics show 77% of mothers with dependents are employed. Most workplace structures, practice and cultural norms are anything other than enabling employees to hold a top job and care at home.
And I want to be crystal clear that I am not saying that the reason why there aren’t more women in top jobs is because we are not audacious enough – that we are not bold enough or brave enough. I am saying that the working world has not been built for us and that something we can do in service of changing that is to be more audacious. I have been thinking about this for a good 9 months and I am determined to bring you more stories of women who are being audacious and getting more influence at work because of it.
Sidenote: In February this year we ran the first Raising & Rising one day career retreat for mothers in senior roles who want to go further in their career. Eight women came together for the space, tools and encouragement to explore what they want next in their careers and how to make it work with a caring load. These women are the ‘talent pipeline’ to become Partners, Managing Partner, Heads of Department and Board members – some sooner, some later. They are the women their organisations want to keep and rise. I’m really pleased to say that my colleague Anita Cleare and I are going to run a second cohort of Raising & Rising in October and we are already hearing from women who would like to be part of it. If you would like to find out more about the experience and register your interest to be the first to find out when places go on sale head to www.talentkeepers.co.uk/rising.
I’m writing this episode on my 47th birthday, the day after International Women’s Day and last week I had the pleasure of joining a Kings Trust fundraiser for women and girls. I asked the panel the panel this question:
“What is the most audacious act or ask you have done in service of fuelling your career?”
Editorial Director of Stylist, Lisa Smosarksi gave a cracking answer which I can’t repeat verbatim. In a nutshell she made it clear to the room that she was bold in the way she asked for a seat on the Board of the Stylist Group. Lisa was the founding editor of Stylist and as of January 2026 takes full leadership responsibility as Managing Director of Stylist. Massive congratulations to Lisa and hats off to you for this month launching The Village by Stylist – a new community for women who are also mothers.
And Karen Snook, organiser of the event also had a audacious tale to tell: as a teen she wanted to work in PR for a London, boutique department store. She said “I didn’t have any qualifications or experience but I sent off my CV anyway. A week later I turned up at their Head Office and asked to see the lady I’d sent my CV to to check it had arrived. I was prepared to work for free just to get my foot in the door. They offered me to work on their events and I ended up staying for 18 months”. So Karen doorstepped her dream employer without any qualifications and it paid off. This is so audacious.
And on this theme of being underqualified, there’s a statistic you’ve probably heard a hundred times in conversations about women and ambition.
It goes like this: men will apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the criteria, but women will only apply when they meet 100%.
And the story usually ends with a moral: women need to be more confident. Women need to be more audacious.
Now here’s the interesting part.
That statistic — the famous 60% versus 100% rule — isn’t actually based on robust research.
The idea seems to come from an internal report at Hewlett‑Packard, which was mentioned anecdotally by someone inside the company years ago. It wasn’t a published academic study, it wasn’t a large dataset, and it wasn’t peer-reviewed.
But the statistic took on a life of its own when Sheryl Sandberg included it in her 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
From there, it spread rapidly through leadership talks, management training, and articles about women at work. Then it was reinforced again in The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, where it was used as evidence of a so-called “confidence gap” between men and women. And once a statistic enters the leadership zeitgeist like that, it starts to feel like a fact.
But when journalists and researchers later went looking for the evidence behind it… they couldn’t find any solid data.
In other words, one of the most repeated statistics about women’s careers is built on surprisingly shaky foundations.
Now that doesn’t mean men and women always behave identically when it comes to job applications. More recent research suggests there are differences — but they’re much more nuanced than the 60/100 story.
For example, some studies suggest women are more likely to interpret job criteria as rules rather than guidelines. If a job description says “must have,” many women assume that literally means must have. Whereas many men read the same list more flexibly — more like a wish list than a checklist.
Other explanations researchers point to include higher perceived performance standards for women, perfectionism, and a greater fear of backlash or failure if you apply and don’t quite match the brief.
So the takeaway isn’t that women lack confidence. The real lesson is this: many women are playing the game exactly as it appears to be written.
Which is why audacity matters.
Because sometimes the rules aren’t actually rules — they’re suggestions. And if you wait until you meet every single criterion before you raise your hand, you may end up waiting far longer than the people who treat the criteria as negotiable.
That’s something my guest on the previous episode, Rakhi Sachdeva, from Microsoft echoes. She said: “You don’t have to wait until you feel 100% ready. If you have the desire to learn, the willingness to partner others and the courage to step into discomfort you can absolutely build your own path. That’s what I truly, truly believe in. I have never been 100% ready for the things that I have done. But saying yes before I felt ready is what’s literally shaped my entire career.”
I put a poll up on Instagram a few weeks ago asking “If you could do the top job in your company and still do the things that matter to you outside of work would you want to be CEO?” Of that very small sample 56% of women said yes. There are so many more women interested and capable of top jobs than I think society recognises. We just do want to do them the way they’ve been set up historically by men, which usually excludes being able to be present in the relationships that matter most to us – with our children, with partners, with friends and with wider family.
One of the women who answered the poll is a past coachee from a large financial institution. We had some DM back and forth about becoming a CEO and acts of audacity. Here are three audacious things she’s done which have helped fuel her career:
“I was new into a Sales (I didn’t know a single female salesperson in the industry) and my male boss tried to get me to adjust my style to be like all the men in the team. I asked if we could revisit the conversation in six months, as it felt more appropriate for me to be authentic and not try and replicate a male to male working relationship. If in six months my way wasn’t working, then I’d reconsider. Needless to say, we didn’t have to have the conversation again….
Audacious act number two: I asked for enhanced maternity pay before I’d started working at my new firm, as they knew I was pregnant when they pursued me for a role.
Audacious act number three: I demanded a financial package relative to my (mainly male) peers compensation, rather than relative to my existing, structurally disadvantaged compensation package. All the peers I’d score better than in a 22 round interview…
Imagine if you could be more like this coachee.
Imagine what that could do for your career.
I am on a mission to get more of these stories out to you, because when we witness audacious acts we are more likely to do them ourselves. Roger Bannister was the first person to run a mile under four minutes. Nobody thought it could be done. After Roger set a new record of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds in 1954 it only took six weeks for it to be broken by John Landy who did it in 3 minutes 58.0 seconds. This is what happens when we see and hear what’s possible.
I want to shine a spotlight on these quietly audacious acts and asks by women that would otherwise go unknown except for themselves and the few people involved. I want to help you learn from each other and dare each other on so if you have an example of how you have done something bold, something edgy, something risky in service of fuelling your career that paid off for you I would love to hear about it.
I’ve set up a google form where you can tell me your story – you can be wonderfully rich and detailed or brief, as you prefer. The link to the form is in the show notes or e-mail hello@talentkeepers.co.uk and we’ll send it to you.
You might be listening and thinking you’ve never done anything audacious at work. I actually don’t think of myself as audacious either. Maybe you want to be bolder though. Maybe you would like to get better at asking for things that would help you do your job better.
Perhaps you want to make the case for more headcount in your team but there’s a hiring freeze. So what? If you don’t have a go you won’t know.
You might want to go to an overseas conference and have your firm pay for your partner to fly with you so that your baby can come too.
Maybe you have an idea for a new revenue stream or product line in your business that you want to head up but that’s not the area you work in, so you’re holding yourself back.
Perhaps you want to do the Chief Operating Officer role four days a week in a business where no one on the Board has ever worked less than full time. So what, you can be the first. You can be the pioneer.
Here are three ways to start to develop and practice audacity at work:
1. Treat job descriptions and organisational rules as negotiation starting points.
2. Start building an “audacity muscle” with smaller asks.
3. Borrow courage from the women who will come after you.
Let’s unpack those one by one.
One reason we hesitate to ask for more – a role, a pay rise, a project – is we assume the system is fixed. But job descriptions evolve. Salaries move. Projects get reshaped. Leaders say yes to things that weren’t originally on the table all the time.
A powerful mindset shift is this:
“This isn’t set in stone. It’s an opening bid.”
So when you’re considering an audacious ask – applying for a job, proposing a role redesign, asking for funding – ask yourself:
What part of this could be negotiable?
And what’s the best that could happen if I simply asked the question?
You’re not breaking the system. You’re participating in it more actively.
Audacity isn’t a personality trait. It’s a behavioural muscle. And like any muscle, it strengthens through repetition.
Instead of waiting for one huge career moment — asking for a promotion, a board seat, a major pay rise — start practising with lower-stakes asks:
Every time you do this, two things happen:
Confidence doesn’t come before audacity. It usually comes after you’ve practised it a few times.
Sometimes the hardest thing about making an audacious ask is that it feels self-focused.
You might think: Who am I to ask for this? What if I look pushy? What if people think I’m being difficult? But here’s a reframing that many women find incredibly powerful:
Don’t make the ask just for yourself. Make it for the women who are watching you.
That might be:
I’ve started thinking this way recently because my daughter Artemis started 6th form at a new school this academic year and she’s now only 18 months away potentially from being in the world of work full time doing a degree apprenticeship. Two weeks ago – after a gruelling three-round process culminating in an interview with the Head – she got made Head Girl and her boyfriend got made Head Boy, which is such an achievement given they’re both new to the school this year. Specific things I’m incredibly proud of are her tenacity, conscientiousness and her knowing her own mind – and her self-confidence to go for big things. She’s a complete inspiration to me and also a role-model and I want to be more audacious to support her being bolder and pioneering when she starts work.
Because every time a woman negotiates pay, asks for leadership responsibility, or challenges the status quo, she quietly moves the boundary of what’s considered acceptable for women at work.
Psychologically, this taps into something important: research shows many women are highly motivated by prosocial goals — doing things that benefit others.
So when you feel hesitant, ask yourself:
“If my daughter — or a younger woman I mentor — were watching this moment, what would I want her to see me do?”
Often the courage appears when the ask stops being about self-promotion and starts being about role modelling.
Because audacity isn’t just a career strategy. It’s also a way of changing the conditions for the women who come next.
So here’s to being more like Bozoma Saint John who we met at the start of the episode – the 22 year old student who worked for director Spike Lee as a receptionist temp and who dared to give feedback on a film script.
Let’s be more like Karen Snook who turned up at a business she desperately wanted to work for.
Let’s be more like my coachee who demanded a financial package relative to her (mainly male) peers compensation, rather than relative to her existing, structurally disadvantaged compensation package.
And if you’ve got a small story or big tale about being audacious at work in service of fuelling your career please do tell me about it via the google form that’s linked in the show notes. You can also e-mail me any time about audacity, executive coaching for you or a group of employees and our Comeback Community employee experience programme for employees returning from maternity, sick leave and other extended periods of absence.
Our website www.talentkeepers.co.uk is the best place to go for the lowdown on who we work with, our services and fees.
And if you would like to register interest in joining the second Raising & Rising cohort for mothers in senior roles the link is talentkeepers.co.uk/rising.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Jo Cato, “Your courage will open doors not just for you, but for countless others who will rise because you dared to go first.”
