Seven pieces of "wisdom" senior women wish they had ignored

Call her Carla. She is a blend drawn from many women, not a real member or client. She is 46, a senior vice president, and she is having lunch in Baltimore with a 31-year-old manager from her team who has just asked the question Carla was asked at 31: "What's the one piece of advice you'd give me?"

Carla is facing a difficulty. Every piece of advice she received at 31 came from someone senior, well-meaning and mistaken, and she followed all of it. She is trying to work out which one did the most damage, so she can warn the manager about that one first. There are seven on the list. Three of them still make her angry.

Option A. Stay quiet, stay focused, and trust that your output will do the talking.

The price is that her work goes unseen. People speak, and in Carla's case the person doing the speaking was her boss, who presented her work as his own for four years. During that period she earned exactly one promotion. He was promoted twice. A 2025 study by McKinsey and LeanIn showed that only 31% of women starting out have a sponsor, while 45% of men at the same stage do. Head down is how you end up in the other 69%.

Option B. Wait to submit an application until you have checked off each qualification on the posting.

The price is six openings she let pass between the ages of 33 and 40. A survey Tara Mohr ran for Harvard Business Review revealed that women pass on positions they consider beyond their reach mostly because they read the stated requirements as hard limits, not because self-doubt is the root cause. Carla treated them as rules. The men who secured those same six roles treated the postings as loose guidelines to bend.

Option C. Be grateful for the opportunity

What it cost her: she thanked every employer for each offer, and that gratitude led her to take whatever starting salary was put in front of her. A Berkeley Haas study reported in 2023 found that 54% of women negotiated their most recent offer, versus 44% of men, and women still earned less. Feeling thankful is an emotion, not a negotiating tactic, and the voices urging her to feel it were never the ones signing her checks.

Seasoned leaders advise

The remaining four surface every time senior women in the Baltimore area swap stories. "Be patient and wait for your turn," a phrase that presumes a queue exists and that somebody is managing it. "Hold back on the ambition," a remark no man past 40 has ever received during a Central Maryland performance review. "Just be yourself," which is useless without the second half: "and find out what that costs here." And the one senior women rank as worst most often: "If you're good, they'll notice." They will notice. They will not necessarily act, and the gap between noticing and acting is where a decade disappears.

The veteran executives also offer a softer message. Not one piece of this guidance was intended to wound her. Those who handed it down reached their positions along a different path and took for granted that the path would remain available. Such guidance isn't false. It is a map that has gone out of date.

The decision.

Everything hinges on who you are at 31. If you are already outspoken, "head down" will not stick. If you are already cautious, "every requirement" will cost you the most, because you will obey it perfectly. Carla gives her own manager in Essex the advice she wishes someone had given her: "Presume that no one is tracking your progress on your behalf, and track it yourself."

Vote paper.

Which of A, B or C cost you the most, in Baltimore or anywhere else? Mail your letter to your chapter, and next month we will publish how the responses broke down. Should your most damaging advice be missing from this roster, submit that as well. We stopped the list at seven simply because the page had room for no more.