Mind the Gap

What my career has taught me about women, work and the gap between potential and performance

When I was asked to contribute to this International Women’s Day special, my first reaction was hesitance. I’ve never really defined myself or the work I do by my gender.

I’ve been a journalist. An editor. And now a psychologist and high-performance coach. But I’ve never considered, wanted or needed a female prefix. The only thing I want to be defined by is my work.

But then I started thinking. And realised gender is far more nuanced and complicated than that.

Because when I look back over my career, it’s impossible to ignore that being a woman has both helped and hindered me along the way.

I started out in journalism in the late 1990s, writing about technology at a time when very few women were doing so. In fact, I was one of the original female tech journalists. At one point I was nicknamed the Gadget Goddess – a slightly tongue-in-cheek label that reflected both the novelty of a woman covering technology and the way media loved to frame female expertise through a different lens.

The truth is, being female helped me stand out in a male-dominated industry — I got work because of it, I made my mark because of it. But it also meant navigating a world where inappropriate comments, awkward advances and endless debates with male editors about whether (scantily clad) women belonged on the cover of men’s magazines, were part of the job.

I also knew I needed to work that bit harder to prove my worth – that I actually knew what I was talking about.

At the time, I accepted all of this as the price of working in a male-dominated environment. I never felt it held me back personally. Perhaps it did in ways I didn’t recognise, but it certainly didn’t stop me building a career I loved.

Looking back, those early experiences taught me something important: the difference between what’s visible and what’s really going on beneath the surface.

Which is exactly the territory my work now explores.

After 25 years in journalism, I retrained as a psychologist and high-performance coach. And the central theme of my work — the thing I come back to again and again with every client — is what I call the gap.

Not the pay gap or the leadership gap — although those are real, and they really matter.

I mean the internal gap.

The one between knowing and doing. Between how capable you are and how capable you feel. Between what you believe about yourself in your best moments, and what your inner critic is whispering (shouting?) at 3am.

Most of us know the behaviours that support performance and wellbeing. We know we should set boundaries, communicate clearly, manage stress, prioritise recovery, ask for help.

Yet knowing something and doing are very different things.

That space in between — the gap — is where people get stuck.

There are other gaps too: the gap between how we really feel and how we present ourselves to the world. The gap between our values and how we behave when we’re tired, stressed or under pressure. The gap between our potential and our performance.

My work is about helping people recognise those gaps — and learning how to bridge them. Or at least shimmy across.

And I see this gap disproportionately in women.

The women I work with — in business, in leadership, in sport — are almost always extraordinarily capable. Capability isn’t the problem.

What holds them back is the invisible weight that often sits alongside it.

The pressure to be perfect before putting their hand up – or putting themselves up for a new job.

The reluctance to delegate because it feels easier — and safer — to just do it themselves.

The difficulty saying no, setting boundaries or having the conversation they’ve been rehearsing in their head for weeks.

High standards can be a superpower. But perfectionism is often a trap.

And a lot of very brilliant women are stuck in that trap — working twice as hard and enjoying it half as much.

International Women’s Day rightly shines a light on the structural barriers that still shape women’s careers. Those conversations matter.

But what I’m really interested in, is the internal work that happens once those doors begin to open. This is where my superpower lies.

Because the most powerful shift I see in my clients isn’t external. It’s the moment someone realises the gap between where they are and where they want to be isn’t a sign they’re failing.

It’s simply the place where growth begins.

Are you ready to grow?

Charlotte Ricca is a psychologist and high-performance coach. As the founder of Kinda Brilliant, her work explores what she calls ‘the gap’ — the space between knowing and doing, and between potential and performance — helping individuals and organisations manage pressure, navigate change and thrive at work and beyond.

kindabrilliantwellbeing.co.uk