This article first appeared on Forbes.com.
In almost every leadership conversation I’ve had over the past year, the same concerns come up. We don’t have enough talent. Benches feel thin. Successors aren’t obvious. Managers are stretched. Even when roles are filled, the pressure doesn’t ease.
The instinct is to blame the labor market. But after decades of building teams, as well as mentoring and sponsoring young women at every stage of my career, I’ve come to believe something harder: While it’s true that the labor market is tight, that’s not the whole story. There’s another side to this conversation, and it has to do with how we design work and nurture talent over time.
Talent gaps aren’t sudden events; they’re long arcs. Generally, by the time companies feel a shortage in hiring funnels, the narrowing has been happening for years—in classrooms, early career experiences and moments where advancement felt misaligned with real life. Rather than a single moment, it’s a steady build of trade-offs around caregiving, missed advancement opportunities, rigid expectations about presence and leadership models that haven’t evolved as quickly as our lives have.
Talent Shortages Are Often Systemic
Workforce stability depends on strong, sustainable pathways for everyone, but some demographics experience early and mid-career challenges more frequently. For example, though women are more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than men, they continue face several structural barriers to advancement and long-term participation.
Over the years, I’ve stayed close to the early and mid-career women I’ve sponsored, and I’ve watched certain patterns emerge around who gets stretch opportunities, who’s told to wait for the next step and who’s simply expected to absorb more. These kinds of signals shape decisions, and I’ve seen talented women’s momentum stall because their ambition collided with rigid systems. For example, I knew a woman in the middle of her career was repeatedly passed over for promotion due to “lack of fit.” This left her demoralized, and ultimately she went in search of a more supportive, inclusive culture.
We also know that the decision to start a family significantly impacts women’s earnings and workforce participation compared to men. I’m reminded of an ambitious investment banker who had to leave an inflexible workplace when it interfered with caring for her son. When she did return to the working world, it was with a focus on gig opportunities that provided the flexibility she felt was best for her family.
These aren’t isolated stories. When women slow down, step off the promotion track or leave the workforce entirely at the same inflection points, we have to ask a different question: What is the system signaling? This is especially vital to acknowledge because we have clear evidence that work design matters. A recent academic study found that access to remote work is associated with measurable increases in working women having babies. Flexibility doesn’t just improve morale; it shapes whether people believe they can build both a career and a future.
This should give business leaders pause. The labor pipeline isn’t infinite. If our structures implicitly force a trade-off between leadership and life, we shouldn’t be surprised when fewer people step forward or stay.
Leadership Strain Is Compounding The Problem
Senior leaders are exhausted, and the strain is coming from multiple directions. They face intense pressure to move faster, cut costs and deliver more with less. At the same time, they’re managing teams grappling with whether AI makes work better, more confusing or simply more demanding. These employees need constant reskilling and reassurance.
At Seramount, we surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. employees for our 2025 “Inside the Mental Health Crisis at Work” report and found that managers report higher stress than the teams they lead. That strain ripples outward. When leaders are depleted, sponsorship slows, development conversations shrink and stretch opportunities become riskier to offer. As a result, promising talent begins to disengage.
In a tight market, work design and leadership quality aren’t soft issues. They’re stabilizers. When either weakens, loss accelerates.
We Have More Agency Than We Admit
The talent shortage is real, but it’s not entirely external. It reflects how we structure work, support managers and consistently sponsor emerging leaders—especially women—through pivotal moments.
Leaders can respond in practical ways:
Look closely at where talent stalls.
Review promotion and retention patterns at the manager and director levels, where caregiving pressures and leadership expectations often collide.
Make flexibility part of how work gets done.
Strong role design signals what’s truly possible for your employees. So don’t treat options like flexibility as special accommodations.
Strengthen managers.
Make structural changes to support leaders’ well-being. For example, reduce managers’ workload, increase their decision-making authority, create peer support systems and give them the tools for leading with empathy and trust.
I’ve long believed that sponsorship changes careers. But I know it can’t overcome systems that make leadership feel unsustainable. If we want stronger benches, we have to build environments where talented people can see a future and stay.
