Why Do Qualified Women Hold Back From Leadership? | Mary Buchzeiger

There is a job posting open right now that you are qualified for. You have read it twice. And you are not going to apply for it.

You would not call that holding back. You would call it being thorough, or being responsible, or waiting for the right timing. That is why I wanted you to hear from Mary Buchzeiger, Chief Executive Officer of Lucerne International in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Mary has spent more than thirty years in global manufacturing, an industry where she is regularly one of two or three women in a room of a hundred. She has watched capable women wait for a long time, and she has almost no patience left for it.

The CEO Who Still Does Not Know What She Wants to Be

Mary likes to say she could drive a high low before she could drive a car. She grew up on five acres with gardens to weed and chickens and turkeys to take care of, and her parents expected her to work from a young age. She came back to the family business while she was finishing her undergraduate degree, planning for it to be a temporary learning experience that would look good on a resume. That was more than thirty years ago.

Ask her when she knew this was her calling and she will not give you a tidy answer.

I actually still don't know if it's actually calling me, but here I am.

Mary Buchzeiger

What she built instead of a plan was a progression. Her mother taught her the floor. Her father taught her the numbers. Then she took the business somewhere neither of them had taken it.

She describes it as a beautiful convergence of the two of them. Notice what neither parent handed her: certainty. She started before she was sure, and the certainty arrived later, if at all.

You are not waiting for readiness. You are waiting for permission, and nobody is coming to give it to you.

Why Qualified Women Hold Back From Leadership

When I asked Mary what she sees women doing differently from men, she went straight to a study she had read, and it named something you have probably done this year.

They're super qualified for everything, but they'll see one little thing or maybe two little things in the job description, they're like, Well, I don't know how to do that. So they don't have enough confidence and they don't apply for the job.

Mary Buchzeiger

Then she described the same page landing in front of a man.

A man will read that same job description that they're qualified for, or maybe underqualified for, and they will see a whole bunch of things they can't do, but two things that they can, and they're like, Well, I can do that. I'm applying for the job.

Mary Buchzeiger

The difference there is not ability. It is arithmetic. One person counts what is missing. The other counts what is present. Both are looking at the same list.

I told Mary about a woman I once spoke with who had two degrees, was nearly finished with a third, and was convinced she needed one more certification before she was qualified. Mary's response was immediate: no, just go for it. Then she named where the pattern comes from.

I think as women, we have this strive for perfection. And I don't know where it comes from. It's, you know, societal expectations. I just have to do this and then I'll be ready. Just go for it. Just take the leap and just do it and learn as you go.

Mary Buchzeiger

What bothers her most is not the hesitation itself. It is watching perfectly capable women decline to put themselves forward out of fear of rejection. She has watched it for decades and it still gets to her.

She is not immune to it either. When I asked how she got comfortable in the C-suite, she talked about walking into rooms to meet a man running a two billion dollar company and being told he was considered a peer.

I wish I could tell my younger self in those moments where I was unsure or a little, you know, taken aback walking into those rooms that you belong there.

Mary Buchzeiger

Do Not Peacock. Bring the Numbers.

Here is the part I want you to sit with, because it is where most advice for women goes wrong. Mary did not tell you to work on believing in yourself more. She told you what to carry into the room.

Really sit down and think honestly about what value you've added to the organization and lead with the data. If you've got hard numbers and you've got data to present, then present it.

Mary Buchzeiger

She understands exactly why that feels hard. She put it better than I could.

As women it's really hard for us to go in and peacock. You know, our feathers are out and we're like, look how great I am. But I feel like men can do that. They're like, check me out. Look what I did.

Mary Buchzeiger

This is the whole point of leading with evidence. You are not required to peacock. The numbers do that part for you. When you walk in with a figure, a percentage, a dollar amount, or a timeline, you are not performing. You are reporting. And there is nothing for anyone to argue with.

Inside her own company Mary removed the guesswork entirely. Everybody has a goal. Everybody has a number. Everybody is marching toward something specific, which makes the whole conversation data driven instead of a negotiation about who is most persuasive that day. Not every organization does this. Most do not. Which means if yours does not, the work of assembling that evidence falls to you.

Your results do not follow you into the room. You carry them in, or they stay outside.

This is the Articulation Gap in one sentence: the distance between the impact you create and the impact leadership recognizes and rewards. Mary has closed it for herself by making her whole company speak in numbers. You can close it for yourself one conversation at a time.

The Club Men Have and We Are Still Building

Mary was clear about what else men do easily that women do less. They reach back for each other.

Guys are out there, you know, golfing every day and patting each other on the back. We need that same kind of camaraderie here and we need to be supporting each other that way.

Mary Buchzeiger

So she built it on purpose. She now belongs to a few different pockets of women executives, one group entirely automotive and in the C-suite, another a mix of women from other industries. They meet for dinner every month or two, rotate hosts, compare notes, and look for ways to be useful to each other. She was direct about the intent: they do it purposefully, and the purpose is support.

What she is after is not just the dinner. It is what happens after enough of these dinners happen out in the open.

Once we do that, the younger generation and people start to see that and it just really starts to trickle down. You have that trickle down effect of other women supporting other women.

Mary Buchzeiger

You do not need a formal organization to start this. You need two names and a calendar invite. That is the entire barrier to entry.

The Move She Wants You to Make Right Now

I asked Mary about AI expecting a measured answer from a manufacturing executive. Instead she lit up and told me it is one of her favorite topics. Then she described her actual desk.

She built all of it herself. An agent scans her email overnight and hands her a daily action board when she walks in, so she no longer digs through an inbox to find out what matters. Other agents run scheduling full time and prepare customer invoices by pulling from the ERP system and her email, assembling them so she can approve and send.

I would give anybody this advice right now. Lean into it as hard as you can.

Mary Buchzeiger

Now here is the half of her advice that most people will skip, and it is the half that matters for your career.

The sooner you can learn how to use AI to your advantage within your job and make yourself more efficient and bring those programs forward to your management or executive team, I think that you're gonna be in much better position.

Mary Buchzeiger

Read that again. Learn it, and then bring what you build forward. That second step is not a productivity tip. It is visibility. If you have spent years doing excellent work that happens quietly, this is one of the most available doors open to you right now, because what you build is something leadership can see, use, and attach your name to.

Efficiency you keep to yourself is a habit. Efficiency you hand to your leadership is a contribution.

What I Want You to Take From This

Near the end, Mary said something that stayed with me. She has been thinking about her own mortality more as she gets older, and it has changed how she weighs a bad situation.

It's way too short to be stuck doing something that you're absolutely miserable doing every single day.

Mary Buchzeiger

Her advice to a woman who feels stuck in an organization that will not change was not gentle and it was not complicated. If more than fifty percent of the time it is not making you happy, get unstuck. Take the initiative. This is not a dress rehearsal.

One more thing from Mary's family, because I love it. Her father's rule was that every time they landed a new program, everyone went to dinner and did a shot of peach schnapps. She still does it. Her whole company knows that when something good happens, they stop and mark it.

So ask yourself when you last said a win out loud. Not in your head, not in a status report nobody reads. Out loud, to somebody who matters. Because if you cannot name what you delivered, nobody above you is naming it either.

Here is your move this week. Take one recent piece of your work and write down the result it created. One number. One sentence. That sentence is the beginning of closing your own Articulation Gap.

About Mary Buchzeiger

Mary Buchzeiger is the Chief Executive Officer of Lucerne International and Lucerne Global Solutions, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. A respected leader in global manufacturing and trade, Mary has transformed Lucerne from a regional supplier into a multinational enterprise serving major OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers across North America, Europe, and Asia. Her strategic vision and operational expertise have positioned Lucerne as a trusted partner for companies navigating complex supply chain, logistics, and tariff environments.

A lifelong advocate for U.S. manufacturing and international collaboration, Mary is known for transforming global challenges into strategic opportunities. She is passionate about strengthening domestic supply chains and advancing women in leadership. In addition to serving on the boards of MICHauto and MEMA OESA, Mary frequently speaks on topics such as trade, tariff policy, and the future of manufacturing.

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