Arianna Huffington Instagram – There’s no doubt that it takes some exceptional qualities to get to the top. Especially when on the way up, a woman will be dogged by charges of “ambition,” “drive,” and “pushiness.” But the biggest obstacle isn’t the media or male colleagues (or even some of our fellow females). Worse than the culture’s approach to women in power are our own fears about power: the fear that we’re setting ourselves up for attack, the fear that we’ll alienate others, the fear that we may actually become the caricature of the obnoxious, shrill, she-devil boss. All these fears manifest themselves in the fear of expressing ourselves. It’s an internalized censorship of ambition. Which is all the worse because, now more than ever, we need women leaders to take us beyond the world of fear we live in. You can find many examples of how to do this in @juliaboorstin’s “When Women Lead” — it’s filled with both research and stories from many of the top women leaders in business of how they fulfilled that ambition.