In the last few years, we’ve seen a clear shift in the C-suite. A growing number of executives are leaning into harder, faster, more dominant leadership styles. Many Executive Assistants are seeing Alpha Leadership Styles surface more often in the C-suite as the culture around us shifts. The kind that prioritize decisiveness, speed, and control over collaboration and emotional intelligence. With cultural moments like Mark Zuckerberg declaring that workplaces have become too feminine, paired with high-profile stories of toxic bro cultures in tech (tell that to the wage gap still running through most organizations), it’s easy for that tone to spill over into your own organization and influence how your Executive shows up day to day. When Alpha Leadership Styles take hold, the pace changes before anyone has time to name what’s happening.
For Executive Assistants, this shift isn’t just theoretical. You will feel it immediately. A change in tone. A jump in urgency. Decisions made faster, with less discussion. Expectations rising overnight. If your executive moves into this style. Whether temporarily, as something they want to try out because the culture has shifted, or they always had these tendencies and now they are the new default, the impact will land directly on your desk.
And for many of us, particularly women and those who value balanced, respectful leadership, this will feel really unsettling. The gap between corporate messaging about inclusion and the reality of day-to-day behavior can be stark, and when your Executive starts mirroring that behavior, even unintentionally, you’re going to be the one who feels the change first. It can be disorienting when anyone changes how they behave, but in this instance, it can really go against the culture you want to work in and the Executive you want to align with.
This article is about helping you navigate that shift. How to understand what’s driving it. How to adjust your communication without compromising who you are. How to stay confident and effective when the pace ramps up. And how to recognize the moment when the culture becomes unhealthy, and it’s time to leave.
It goes without saying that it is not your job to control your Executive’s leadership style, but you can control how you respond to it. and how you protect your voice, your boundaries, and your role as a strategic partner in the C-suite. Because alpha leadership styles can look efficient from the outside, but the day-to-day experience for an EA can be anything but.
The 1:1 Meeting Template for Executives and Assistants gives you the steps to ensure that when you have a one-to-one meeting with your Executive, you get through all the work you need to cover and maximise your time together.
This shift in behavior isn’t about your Executive suddenly deciding to sharpen their leadership style. It’s bigger than that. It’s part of the cultural moment we’re all operating in. A moment where Executives are being fed the message that dominance, speed, and visible toughness are the markers of effective leadership. When markets feel unstable, and stakeholders want results yesterday. When boards feel nervous. When tech leaders publicly frame aggression and a lack of empathy as a virtue. Executives might start to absorb that message, consciously or not. Some (and I’m far from saying all) start to believe that this is simply how business is done now, and they have to adapt their approach to keep up. One of the toughest parts of alpha leadership styles is figuring out what’s stress-driven and what’s becoming the new normal.
Research helps explain why these shifts can feel so sudden. Sociologist Jennifer Berdahl describes something called “masculinity contest culture,” which shows up in four traits:
As EAs, I know you’ll recognize these traits instantly when they surface in the C-suite. Decisions speed up, patience drops, urgency becomes the default, and there’s an expectation of constant availability. And the tone in which you are asked to do things gets harder, even if the actual content hasn’t changed. What happens ultimately is that work becomes a performance of toughness rather than actual progress.
For Executive Assistants, unfortunately, these traits don’t sit at arm’s length, and you can’t just ignore them. These new ways of working will land right in the middle of your day.
But how does the shift in leadership style manifest itself in your day-to-day? You’ll see it in the small things first. Shorter replies. Sharper requests. Fewer explanations. Priorities change mid‑morning, then again by lunch. You might get half the context you used to, but double the expectations. Meetings that had space for discussion become rapid-fire decisions. And the pace they set for themselves quickly becomes the pace they expect from you.
The other side of this change in leadership style is that you, as the EA, become the first responder, the filter, the translator who has to go out and explain this to your slightly bewildered colleagues. And on tough days, you might also become the person colleagues vent to because they can’t take their frustration directly to the leader.
Understanding where this shift comes from doesn’t excuse poor behavior – far from it. But we can’t all leave our jobs (at least not straight away) because our Exec has embraced a tech bro mindset. What this article aims to do is give you clarity. And clarity is what you need to navigate the change with steadiness and resolve.
When your Executive shifts into a more dominant or high‑intensity style, your first job is to figure out what’s actually changing. It’s rarely just a sharper tone. Often it comes with a dip in empathy, a shorter fuse, or language and behavior that would have raised eyebrows months ago. It could be comments that land badly, jokes that miss the mark, or reactions that feel disproportionate. These aren’t always intentional (and sometimes they really, really are). If unintentional, the behavior is often due to a mix of pressure, insecurity, and a cultural moment that keeps rewarding leaders for being harder, less empathetic, and collaborative. And because this style is being normalized publicly, calling out inappropriate or offensive behavior can feel riskier and more complicated than it should.
So how do you read the change accurately? You need to look for patterns. Is this a temporary spike because of a deadline or stakeholder pressure, or is it settling in as the new leadership style? Are they short with everyone, or only you? Has the way they speak to people changed, or just the pace? Are they cutting off conversations that used to be collaborative? Are they using phrases or jokes they’d never have used six months ago? These small shifts help you understand whether you’re dealing with stress, habit, or a deeper behavioural turn.
It’s also important to distinguish between decisive and domineering. Decisive leadership isn’t a bad thing; decisive leaders are great. Being decisive ultimately speeds up clarity and makes the whole organization move at pace. Domineering leadership, however, is what we need to be concerned about. Domineering leaders shut down dialogue. One helps you work faster. The other makes you second‑guess every interaction. If they’re simply moving quickly, you can adapt your workflow. But if they’re dismissing context, shutting down your input, or using intensity as a way of behaving inconsiderately, that requires a different response.
The clearer you are about the type of shift you’re seeing, the easier it becomes to adjust your own approach without absorbing behaviour you shouldn’t have to carry. Alpha leadership styles can normalize behavior that doesn’t feel respectful, and EAs need to trust their instincts when something feels off.
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