There is a pattern I see show up reliably among senior professional women considering career transitions: the assumption that changing fields requires financial regression. Not as a negotiation position. As established fact.
Executive women with years of stakeholder management, strategic execution, and organisational navigation describe their next move as “starting from the bottom“. Corporate women who have built teams, driven revenue, and resolved complex problems across functions frame their transferable expertise as irrelevant the moment they cross an industry boundary or shift role type.
Here is the thing, my darling: this framing rarely comes from external pressure. It emerges internally, before the first conversation even happens. And that is precisely where strategic career negotiation breaks down before it begins.
You Would Never Accept This for Someone Else
What makes this particularly notable is that it contradicts how these same women evaluate capability in other contexts. They recognise strategic thinking when they see it. They know that influencing cross-functional teams requires skill that transcends sector. They understand that someone who has navigated organisational complexity in one environment can typically do so in another.
And yet, when the transition is their own, that objective assessment framework disappears. The same professional who would question why a strong candidate was being lowballed will pre-emptively accept less for herself, often before anyone, including Bob down the corridor, has suggested she should.
The competence is portable. The confidence in that competence, apparently, is not.
The Compounding Cost of Assumed Deficit
This is exactly the kind of pattern that executive career coaching for women is designed to interrupt.
Each transition made from a position of assumed deficit rather than demonstrated capability resets the financial baseline lower than it needs to be. The gap between what someone with that skill level could command and what they actually negotiate widens with each move. Over a decade, the compounding cost is substantial.
It is particularly pronounced among women who have built deep expertise. The more specialised the background, the more likely they are to discount everything they have developed when they imagine themselves elsewhere. Nuanced communication, strategic judgement, stakeholder navigation: all reframed as non-transferable the moment the industry or role label changes. This is where career negotiation coaching changes the trajectory entirely.
Pivoting Does Not Mean Regressing
The assumption that pivoting requires financial regression only holds if you accept it before the conversation begins. I know that because many of my clients at Women of Agency make dramatic career pivots through our women’s career coaching program, and their average salary increase is 93%.
