"If you're not taking risks and dealing with fallout, perhaps you're demonstrating that you won't like the intensity [at the senior management level]."

Other qualities also may also hinder women's ability to advance their careers. For example, women managers are rated as more nurturing, emotionally expressive and sensitive than male managers. "Women are less dominant, less competitive and more willing to ask for help," says Dr. Hagberg (Patterson, 2005). "That's why they're better team players."

These qualities result in high ratings from subordinates when women are at the middle management level, but by being too protective of their work groups, their bosses may see them as "rescuers and mothers," rather than as potential senior-level executives.

Fortunately, ambitious women executives do not have to reinvent themselves to advance. They just have to fine-tune existing skills, according to experts. "The team- and consensus-building skills women have are the skills required for managing,"...
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