The assistant problem: what it costs over 20 years, and the 10-second correction

A 2025 McKinsey and LeanIn study, Women in the Workplace, found that female leaders are about twice as likely as male leaders to be mistaken for someone in a junior role. If you have been asked to take minutes, fetch coffee or confirm a conference room while holding a title with "vice president" in it, the research is describing your Tuesday.

The striking part is not just that the error occurs. Plenty of women in Milwaukee, from downtown offices to the suburbs of Waukesha and Brookfield, could tell the story without prompting. The researchers tracked it among women who had already passed every hurdle their company had put in place for advancement. Seniority does nothing to make the error go away. It follows you upstairs. A director ends up being taken for the event coordinator. A C-suite executive is asked to hang up the coats. Nobody in the room is responding to the job title you hold. It is reacting to you.

Its source

Since 2015, McKinsey and LeanIn have produced Women in the Workplace each year, a survey of American corporations that gathers answers from both the businesses and the people who work in them. The 2025 edition asked leaders about everyday experiences at work, and being mistaken for someone more junior is one of them, with women reporting it at twice the rate of men. Because the results rely on people's own accounts, they reflect what individuals recalled noticing, not a complete tally of each occurrence. The data also cannot tell you who made the mistake or why. What the data does reveal is a recurring trend, frequent enough to show up across a nationwide sample, so you are far from alone in experiencing it.

Its appearance

Picture a quarterly review at a Milwaukee-area firm. You are the senior vice president whose name sits beside the figure on the display. A recently appointed board member walks in ahead of time, glances around and wonders aloud whether "the SVP" will show up soon. You calmly note, with a smile, that she has already arrived. He turns red for a moment, then regains his footing, and throughout the remainder of the session he treats you with an uneasy politeness that carries its own burden. There was no ill will behind the slip. It was simply the room's automatic assumption that the person in charge had to be somebody other than you.

What it signifies for your role

Call it the assistant problem, since it shows up in boardrooms from Waukesha to Germantown alike. Every episode takes roughly ten seconds and a brief jolt to your poise. The cumulative cost is different. Illustratively, if it happens once a month across a twenty-year career, that is roughly 240 moments in which a stranger's first read of you had to be corrected before the real conversation could start. It is in those opening moments that people decide how much to trust you. The trouble does not stem from how junior you seem. It is that the room's picture of "senior" was built by looking at who used to hold the job, and in many Milwaukee boardrooms and executive offices that picture has been slow to change.

Your next move

Correct it in a flash and carry on, each time, without any flare of irritation. Announce your title before the confusion arises, if you can: "I'm the SVP for the region. Should the error come first, respond as you would to a misstated date: "I'm the SVP, actually." Then move straight into the agenda, with no punchline, no apology and no dwelling on it. You are simply fixing an inaccurate detail, and whoever updates it fastest comes out ahead.

Which correction have you found yourself making most frequently, and how many meetings went by before you quit apologizing for having to make it?