One of Generative Consulting’s Suggested Readings is How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith
 

"Sally and Marshall identify habits that hold women back as they seek to advance, showing them why what worked for them in the past might actually be sabotaging their future success."

Some highlights from the research in How Women Rise:
 

• Men are more focused on “winning” & assigning numeric rank & score getting ahead
   

• Women are more likely to build up others & self sacrifice.  Women tend to talk about winning as a collaborative endeavor
   

• Women need to fight to maintain confidence
   

• Women need to remind themselves why they’re deserving
   

• Men dominate & fight for respect
   

• Men tend to act “as if” they have something already, overconfidence rarely a barrier for men
   

• Women tend to think “too ambitious”  has a negative connotation. This comes from prior generations thinking, when women were asked to define  “ambition”, many associated ambition with ego,”trampling on others”, instead of aspirational some said things like “ambitious like a politician”, “all about self promotion”; whereas the majority of men’s answers did not have negative connotations associated with ambition.
   

• Another belief that gets in the way of women is perfectionism or getting ready to get ready. Perfectionism can disguise itself as a belief that “I can’t offer my thinking because I need to do more research first” or a need to validate and verify to prove what I’m saying has merit. (and of course, sometimes research is needed, ie market research, credit analysis, etc.