"Ready" is a feeling in your boss's head. Here's how to put it there.

The usual guidance is to get prepared. Pick up the skills the next job calls for, sign up for the course, patch the holes in your record, and once you can truthfully say you measure up, put your hand up. Earn it first, then ask. Most of us grew up hearing this, and there is real integrity in doing the work that way.

Still, "ready" isn't a measurable fact about you. It's an image sitting in your manager's mind, and the promotion tends to land with whoever already appears in that image, qualified or not.

Item 1. Judgments of readiness rest on resemblance rather than on a checklist.

Whenever a leadership team discusses who should be promoted, hardly anyone pulls up a competency matrix. They picture the person in the seat. Could they picture her running the all-hands, calming the angry client on the phone, or standing in front of the board? If so, she's ready. If not, she needs "a bit more seasoning," and that phrase describes the listener's imagination far more than her track record. According to the 2025 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn, women in leadership are about twice as likely to be taken for someone more junior than they are. When a room assumes you're junior, it has a hard time imagining you in a senior seat.

Item 2. The same checklist reads differently depending on who's reading it

A survey by Tara Mohr, reported in Harvard Business Review, showed that women frequently turn down openings they feel unqualified for, mostly because they read the posted requirements as strict mandates. Men, by contrast, usually read that same list as a set of aspirations. So the woman holds off until she meets every line, while the man who has six of ten applies, gets imagined in the role, and wins it. Right at the point she concluded she wasn't prepared, she had already become the stronger candidate.

Item 3. The gap in ambition is not what it appears to be.

That same McKinsey and LeanIn report found 80% of women want a promotion, compared with 86% of men, and that the gap disappears when women get equal support. Women aren't less driven. Women are simply given fewer opportunities to be observed performing the next role before it becomes officially theirs, and observation is what builds that mental image.

Here is where the traditional advice still applies.

Competence matters a great deal. Promoting someone into a job they aren't yet able to handle amounts to a glass cliff dressed up with a nicer announcement. Russell Reynolds found women CEOs average 5.2 years in the job versus 8.1 years for men. The sample is small, yet it's revealing, and part of what it reveals is that women are often positioned to fail. So prepare. Simply avoid waiting until your preparation feels complete before you let people see you.

A stronger strategy

Put yourself into the picture before the position is even open. Lead the meeting that your manager would ordinarily chair while she is out. Once a quarter, brief her boss on a topic that bears directly on the business. After that, state the idea outright: "I'm aiming for the VP role once it becomes available. What would you want to observe from me between now and then?" Their reply forms your actual checklist, and it tends to be much briefer than the one you wrote on your own. Across the Portland metro, each month you should complete one task from that list in a place where the decision-makers can see you do it.

Here in Portland, where the region's biggest employers range from Oregon Health & Science University and Providence to Intel in Hillsboro and Nike in Beaverton, the people deciding promotions are often the same people you see at a Portland Women Leaders Association event or a local chamber meeting. When Portland's leaders discuss the next VP, does your name come to mind as a clear image or as a question mark?