Geraldine Gallacher | CEO
From the football pitch to the workplace, discover why visible role models are essential for leadership, inclusion and long-term career success.
Like many others, I followed the recent World Cup, though not as assiduously or enthusiastically as my husband it has to be said. Since, my feed has been full of clips of the game's biggest names being genuinely good role models. Ronaldo, mobbed constantly by kids, could easily get irritated, instead he stops, hugs them, takes the selfie they'll treasure for life. Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland, direct rivals on the pitch when playing for their countries, are unashamedly public about how much they rate each other off it. Separate to the world cup, New York Red Bull's Dante Vanzeir put his own sweatshirt around his mascot's shoulders when the heavens opened and then watched the gesture ripple down the whole line as the other players quietly followed suit.
Clearly the algorithm has clocked that I'm a sucker for these posts. But given how much has been written about who platforms like LinkedIn choose to feed content to, I do wonder who else is being fed this algorithm? I hope plenty of young men are seeing it too, because it's a far healthier model of masculinity than others currently being sold to them from other ‘influencers’. I won't give them the airtime of naming them; you'll know who I mean.
Here's the thing though, none of this is really about football, it's about visibility. Boys who only ever see aggressive, self-serving models of masculinity will absorb that as normal, just as boys who see Ronaldo's patience, or Bellingham and Haaland's easy generosity towards each other, absorb something much better. The exact same mechanism is at work in our offices, five days a week. And it plays out very differently depending on who you are.
For men, the pipeline of role models is intact. Look up from most desks and there's a man who did your job a few years ago, and that continues as you look up the seniority. Every rung is visibly climbable because someone who looks like you is standing on it. It's no wonder ambition comes easily; you've watched it work over and over.
For women, that ladder has gaps in it and they're not random. The pipeline is affected by the motherhood penalty: research from Lancaster University's Work Foundation found women's monthly earnings are down by around 45% five years after their first child, with mothers also significantly less likely to be in paid work at all in the 18 months afterwards. Essex University research describes a distinct "motherhood class penalty": even women in senior professional roles see their progress toward leadership interrupted, careers shifted sideways into less demanding posts or stalled at a permanent plateau.
None of this is about capability, it's what happens when the system treats caring responsibilities as a woman's problem to solve alone, and reads her doing so as reduced commitment. So, when junior women look up, there is an absence of relatable role models for them, unlike their male counterparts. Fewer women reach the visible, senior seats and the ones who do are often the exceptions who found a way to conform to the system rather than proof that it works. This makes it hard for women considering leadership to envision a clear path to follow as you can’t be what you can’t see.
The football moments even map neatly onto what good workplace role modelling looks like. Ronaldo making time for a fan is the senior leader who still finds twenty minutes for a junior mentee, especially one who doesn't look or sound like them. Bellingham and Haaland's rivalry-turned-friendship is the manager who champions a colleague's win in a room where politics might reward the opposite. And the example of Dante Vanzeir's sweatshirt travelling down the line is the senior man or woman who leaves at 5.30 for nursery pickup without apologising for it, and in doing so gives everyone junior to them permission to do the same.
If the good stuff lands in your feed, forward it to a young man who might not be getting it. And if you're the one deciding who gets sponsored, stretched, or put forward for the next role, look hard at who really needs it. Small acts travel fast, on the pitch and off, and someone right now is deciding what's normal and what's possible by watching what you do.
You’ve got the ball, who are you going to pass it to?
