Nicole Johnston is a global senior sales and marketing executive with more than 20 years’ experience. She has previously worked for Procter & Gamble, Hershey Foods, Kimberly-Clark, and Newell Brands.
An experienced leader, she discovered that her greatest fulfillment comes from providing positive, professional support to women navigating career challenges. In 2023, she founded innatePOWER to support women in overcoming obstacles and achieving their potential.
In 2025, she wrote Taboo Topics: Things Women Should Talk About, But Don’t which explores five core taboo topics including the hidden rules of executive presence—and why women are evaluated differently including the emotional labor tax that drains confidence and performance, the pressure to overdeliver and how it sabotages strategic visibility, the guilt, burnout, and internalized expectations women quietly carry, and the real conversations women need to have to move from capable to promotable.
Johnston sat down with TWA to give her advice on how women can achieve their full potential in the workplace.
TWA: Many women enter the workforce highly capable but quickly encounter unspoken expectations. What are some of those “hidden rules” they should be aware of early on?
Nicole Johnston (NJ): There are so many, and the maddening part is that no one tells you about them. Instead, you just find out the hard way.
The first one is that being good at your job is not enough. Women are expected to be good at their job and manage the room by making sure everyone is comfortable, that the meeting runs smoothly, that the birthday cake gets ordered, or that the conflict gets smoothed over. That invisible labor is not in your job description, and it is work that will not get you promoted. But if you don't do it, someone will notice.
The second hidden rule is that women are held to a double standard when it comes to emotion and ambition. Be confident but not too confident. Be assertive but not pushy. Be passionate but don't you dare cry. I had a boss put in writing that I would never get anywhere because I giggled. Not because of my results, but because of a giggle. The invisible rulebook is relentless.
The third is around perfectionism. Women are socialized from childhood to get it right the first time, every time. So, when the work gets hard, and it will, women often retreat rather than risk being seen as less than perfect. Men apply for jobs when they meet 60% of the criteria. Women wait until they meet 100%. That gap costs women enormously over the course of their career.
Know the hidden rules exist. Name them. And then refuse to let them limit you.
TWA: What advice would you give women to avoid falling into what you call “non-promotable work”?
NJ: This is one of the most important conversations I have with women, because the trap is real and invisible until you are already in it.
Non-promotable work is the work that keeps the organization running but never shows up on a performance review. Planning the team offsite. Ordering the birthday cake. Taking the notes in every meeting. Mentoring the new hires because someone has to. Staying late to smooth over a conflict that wasn't yours to fix. These things are necessary, but they do not build your career. And research shows women are asked to do them far more often than men.
My advice: before you say yes to anything, ask yourself, “Does this build my visibility, my skills, or my relationships in a meaningful way?” If the answer is no, you are allowed to say no, or to redirect. Practice saying, "I'd love to help think through who the right person is for that." You do not have to be the default answer to every organizational need.
TWA: In your book, Taboo Topics, you talk about the emotional labor tax. How does this show up for women specifically?
NJ: The emotional labor tax is the constant, invisible cost women pay for managing not just their own emotions, but everyone else's.
It shows up in a thousand small ways. It's monitoring your tone in every email to make sure you don't come across as too aggressive. It's bracing yourself before a meeting with a difficult colleague and running through how to respond to every possible scenario. It's suppressing a legitimate reaction because you know if you show frustration, you'll be labeled “emotional,” but if a man shows the exact same frustration, he'll be called passionate. It's smiling through pain so that no one in the room is made uncomfortable.
In my book, I write about the three layers of the mental load: cognitive labor, emotional labor, and mental labor, and how women are carrying roughly 70% of all of it. Women are the ones anticipating needs, managing the temperature of the room, keeping everyone functioning at work and at home. Simultaneously.
The emotional labor tax is exhausting not because any single instance is huge, but because it is constant and it is unrecognized. The first step to addressing it is naming it. The second step is refusing to keep paying it silently. Start noticing what it costs you and then start having the conversations that redistribute the load more fairly.
TWA: What should women focus on now if they aspire to senior leadership roles in the future?
NJ: Three things, and they are not the ones most people expect.
First, build relationships intentionally. Not networking in the transactional, 'here is my card' sense. Real relationships with people who will tell you the truth, open doors for you, and advocate for you when you are not in the room. I cannot tell you how many career opportunities in my 30 years came directly from a relationship I had invested in. Your network is your net worth, but only if it is real.
Second, get comfortable with being seen. So many women do brilliant work and then wait to be recognized for it. That is not how it works. You need to be your own advocate. Build your 'atta-girl folder,' a running repository of your wins, your results, your impact. Use it in performance conversations. Make sure the people making decisions about your career actually know what you have accomplished.
Third, develop psychological safety around you now. Learn to lead in a way that makes people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and bring their full capabilities. The leaders who get the most out of their teams are not the ones who demand the most; they are the ones who create the conditions for people to do their best work. That skill will differentiate you more than anything else as you move up.
TWA: How can women advocate for themselves, whether in compensation, promotions, or opportunities, without being penalized?
NJ: I want to be honest that there is no magic formula that guarantees you will never face pushback. Women who advocate for themselves are sometimes penalized, and that is real and it is unfair. What I can tell you is how to do it in a way that maximizes your chances and minimizes the risk.
Do your homework. Do not walk into a salary negotiation or a promotion conversation without data. Know the market rate for your role. Know what your peers are earning, if you can. Know your results cold. The more you anchor the conversation in facts and evidence rather than feelings, the harder it is to dismiss.
Frame it as a business conversation, not a personal one. 'Based on my contributions over the past year and current market data, I'd like to discuss adjusting my compensation' is harder to penalize than 'I feel like I deserve more.' One is a business case; the other is an opening for someone to disagree with your feelings.
And build allies. Have people in the room, or who have been in the room, who will advocate for you when you are not present. The most important career conversations happen without you in them. Make sure someone who knows your work and respects you is part of those conversations. In other words, get a sponsor.
Women who don’t negotiate lose out on anywhere from $1–1.5 million over their lifetime. The cost of not asking is almost always higher than the cost of asking.
TWA: You emphasize that “everything in life is a skill.” How can women reframe workplace challenges as skill-building opportunities?
NJ: This reframe is one of the most powerful tools I have found, because it takes something that feels like a threat and turns it into something you can actually use.
When you are dealing with a difficult boss, the skill you are building is navigating environments that are not psychologically safe, which, I promise you, will happen more than once in a career. When you are asked to do a presentation on something you barely know, the skill you are building is performing under pressure and demonstrating range. When you are passed over for a promotion that should have been yours, the skill you are building is resilience and strategic self-advocacy.
Parenting is a skill. Leading people is a skill. Negotiating is a skill. Even crying at work, something I write about in Taboo Topics, can become a skill when you learn how to frame it and move forward with confidence instead of shame.
The key shift is moving from 'this is happening to me' to 'what am I learning from this?' It does not mean the situation is OK. It means you refuse to let it only cost you. You take something from it every single time.
Perfectionism tells us that challenges mean we are failing. The truth is that challenges are exactly where the growth is. Every hard situation is a masterclass. You just have to decide to show up and get the lesson from it.
TWA: What gives you the most optimism about the future of women in leadership, particularly with Gen Z entering the workforce?
NJ: Honestly? Gen Z gives me so much hope.
Here is a generation that grew up with the internet, which means they grew up with information and community and access to conversations that my generation had to fight for decades to even name. Gen Z is not willing to tolerate the things my generation was told to just accept. Gen Z talks about mental health openly. They push back on systems that are inequitable. They call things out in real time instead of waiting 30 years to write a book about it.
They are also much less willing to separate their personal values from their professional choices. They want to work for organizations that align with what they believe. That puts enormous pressure on companies to actually 'walk the talk' on inclusion and support for women and not just put it in a slide deck.
What I see with Gen Z women in particular is a generation that has language for things my generation didn't have. They know what gaslighting is. They know what the mental load is. They know what psychological safety means. When you can name something, you can address it. And when an entire generation comes into the workforce already knowing the names? Well, that changes things.
I am not naive. The structural challenges are real and they are stubborn. But the momentum is different now. And I genuinely believe the work my generation did to name the problems, combined with Gen Z's refusal to normalize them, is going to accelerate change faster than any generation before us managed to.
TWA: If you could give one piece of advice to women starting their career today, what would it be?
NJ: Find your tribe before you need them.
I know that sounds simple. It is not.
Most women wait until they are in crisis with a toxic boss, or a terrible situation, or a career crossroads before they start building real relationships. By then, you are trying to build a support system while also putting out a fire, and that is enormously more difficult.
Your tribe is not just the people who celebrate your wins. They are the ones who will tell you the truth when you need to hear it. Who will walk through a negotiation with you. Who will say 'that situation is not OK' when you have been gaslit into thinking it might be your fault. Who have been through something you are about to go through and can hand you the roadmap instead of letting you figure it out from scratch.
I have been blessed with phenomenal women in my life, my tribe members who are dedicated to at the front of my book, and I cannot tell you the number of mind-opening, life-altering conversations I have had that changed my trajectory because of them. Nothing was off limits. Nothing was taboo.
Start building that tribe now. Invest in it. Protect it. And when you have learned something that could help another woman, share it. Because the less willing we are to share, the more aspects of our lives will continue to remain shrouded in silence.
And remember, well-behaved women seldom make history. You have my full permission to make some.
