Tall poppy syndrome is an old problem with an ugly modern habit. It describes what happens when someone stands out, achieves something, or simply says something worth hearing, and the response is not well received. It is criticism, exclusion, or a quiet campaign to bring that person back down to size, and it rarely stays contained to the person it happens to. It costs trust, ideas and talent across whole teams and organisations, not just the individual who gets cut down.
I have had first-hand experience of this, more times than I care to remember. Many others who I know in cyber security and tech have had the same experience, and it is time we talked about it properly and openly.
Where The Term Comes From
The story is ancient. According to the Roman historian Livy, King Tarquinius Superbus responded to a question about how to handle powerful rivals by walking through his garden and silently cutting the heads off the tallest poppies. The message needed no words. The tallest get cut first. The phrase took hold in its modern form in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s, but every culture seems to have its own version of the same warning against standing out. Japan has a saying that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Scandinavia has the Law of Jante, a set of unwritten rules against thinking you are anyone special. The Dutch call it “maaiveldcultuur”, the culture of staying below the mowing line. Different words, same instinct: stay level, or be levelled.
What Tall Poppy Syndrome Actually Means
The phrase describes the social pressure that pushes down anyone who grows taller than the crowd around them. It is a levelling instinct dressed up as fairness. Someone does well, speaks up, or gets noticed, and instead of support they get resentment, gossip, or a slow erosion of goodwill. Psychology Today describes three clear signs of it:
- Being labelled “too ambitious” for showing drive
- Being quietly frozen out of meetings and opportunities
- Talented people staying silent rather than risk the backlash of being seen
- Being afraid to talk about achievements rather than risk any possible backlash
What The Research Shows
Tall poppy syndrome is not just a feeling. A 2023 study called The Tallest Poppy, run by Women of Influence+, surveyed 4,710 people across 103 countries. It found that 86.8% of women said they had been attacked, resented, disliked, criticised, or cut down because of their achievements or success. Among those women, 77% said their achievements had been downplayed, 72.4% said they had been excluded from meetings or ignored, 70.7% said they had been undermined because of what they had accomplished, and 66.1% said someone else had taken credit for their work.
The cost was not just personal. 85.6% of the women surveyed said the experience raised their stress levels, 73.8% reported a negative effect on their mental health, and 66.2% said their confidence dropped as a result. Two thirds went on to look for a new job, and half of those left. On the organisational side, 75% said it reduced productivity and 77.5% said it damaged trust within their team. Cutting someone down does not just hurt the person on the receiving end. It costs the whole organisation.
Who Does the Cutting, And Why It Is Not Only Men
One finding from that same study deserves more attention than it usually gets. Men were more likely to penalise women for their success, regardless of hierarchical position, while women were more likely to target their peers, the colleagues sitting right next to them rather than those clearly above or below them. It is an uncomfortable finding, and I will not pretend otherwise. Women are not exempt from tall poppy behaviour.
In my own experience, and in conversations with other women in this field, it does not always stay at peer level either. Plenty of women describe female managers who have quietly held back the rising stars beneath them, even though the research points more often to peer-on-peer behaviour. None of this is only about women. Men can be tall poppies too, cut down for the same reasons, though this piece focuses on what I have seen and lived as a woman in cyber security and tech. In an industry where women already make up a small share of the workforce, that peer-level undermining lands especially hard, because the community you would hope would have your back is sometimes the one holding the shears.
My Own Head Above the Parapet
I have spent years speaking publicly about neurodiversity and neuroinclusion, about imposter syndrome, and about the culture of the cyber security and wider technology industry. I’ve also spoken out and openly about the toxic behaviours I see in this field day in and day out. Every time I have put my head above the parapet on these subjects, the response has not always been kind. I have been targeted by men aplenty in this industry, but some of the sharpest criticism I have faced has come from other women, the very people I would have expected to understand exactly what it costs to speak up in the first place. Is it jealousy? Insecurity? Envy dressing up as fear? I will let you draw your own conclusions.
That is the part of tall poppy syndrome that stings the most. You brace yourself for pushback from people who have never had to fight for a seat at the table. You do not expect it from those sitting beside you at that same table. And yet it happens, often enough that I know I am not describing something rare. I know many other women in this field who have quietly stopped raising their heads because of exactly this. That silence is a loss, not just for them, but for all of us.
I could fill pages with specific incidents, and there have been more than I care to count. A senior figure in this industry once dismissed an association I was founding to my face, telling me it would never work, only for it to succeed and pave the way for the AI and Cyber Security Association I lead today. I have been told more than once that I am not technical enough to belong in cyber security, as though the human side of risk does not matter just as much as the technical side when an organisation needs to explain a cyber-attack to its board and staff in plain, jargon-free language. This is where my background in journalism, broadcasting and crisis communications comes into its own. I have also had people question whether I earned the awards and the MBE I have received. For example, there have been assumptions that I have a PR company doing award entries on my behalf. I don’t have one, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have them do award entries – I could write a whole other article about those. None of these moments have stopped me though. Each one has however made me more careful about how openly I share anything, which is its own quiet cost, and exactly the point of this article.
Why This Matters for Cyber Security
Cyber security depends on people who are willing to say the difficult thing before it becomes an emergency. It needs people who will flag the risk nobody wants to hear about, challenge a decision that feels wrong, or point out that a process built for one kind of mind excludes everyone else. Every one of those things requires someone to stand a little taller than the crowd for a moment. If the response to standing taller is to get cut down, the lesson some people learn is to stay quiet. An industry that quietly teaches its most capable people to not speak up and to shrink is an industry that will keep missing the warnings it most needs to hear.
What We Do About It
None of this is fixed by asking anyone to toughen up or by pretending the problem does not exist. It is fixed by naming it clearly, the way I have tried to do here, and by choosing differently in our own behaviour. Notice when you feel the urge to downplay a colleague’s win and ask yourself honestly where that urge comes from. Give credit out loud, in the room, not privately afterwards.
When you see someone else’s achievement being quietly diminished, say something in the moment rather than staying comfortably silent. A simple phrase is often enough such as: “That is genuinely good work, well done.” You do not need a grand gesture, you need one honest sentence, said out loud, at the time. And if you are the one who has been cut down, keep a record of what happened, talk to someone you trust, whether that is a manager, a mentor, or a professional body, and do not let the experience convince you to stop growing.
There are times I have felt that I do not belong in the cyber security and tech industry, and that I should leave it behind as a result. But I am not going to do that. I am also not going to stop speaking about the toxic culture that is so prevalent in cyber security and tech, or stop speaking about neurodiversity, imposter syndrome, the gender pay gap and more. As Obi-Wan Kenobi says in the first Star Wars film, “You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” It is part of why I founded Cyber Kindness. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, this behavour needs to be called out and spoken about.
Final Thoughts
I am not writing this piece looking for sympathy of any kind. I am writing it because naming it is the first step to breaking the cycle of tall poppy syndrome. I am sure that those who decided they were going to bring me down will read this, roll their eyes and try to think of even more imaginative ways to bring me down. Spoiler alert, it will not work.
The poppies that get cut down tend to grow back much taller and stronger than they were before. That has certainly happened to me. I would rather keep growing tall, strong and proud in the open rather than shrink myself to make anyone else comfortable, and I suspect a good number of you reading this feel the same way. If you do, please feel free to share your experiences of “tall poppy syndrome” with me via lisa@cyberkindness.org.uk. I would love to hear from you.
Sources and Citations
Tall Poppy Syndrome. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
Tall Poppy Syndrome: Origins, Effects, And How To Cope. Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/tall-poppy-syndrome
3 Signs That You’re Facing Tall Poppy Syndrome. Mark Travers PhD, Psychology Today, 6 February 2025. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202502/3-signs-that-youre-facing-tall-poppy-syndrome
The Tallest Poppy: How The Workforce Is Cutting Ambitious Women Down. Dr Rumeet Billan, Women of Influence+, 2023 whitepaper (the primary research document, 4,710 respondents across 103 countries, survey run 9 January to 10 February 2023). https://www.womenofinfluence.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tp-whitepaper.pdf
The Tallest Poppy. Women of Influence+, project landing page. https://www.womenofinfluence.ca/tps/
The Cost of Ambition: New Research Finds Almost 90 Per Cent Of Women Worldwide Are Penalised And Undermined Because Of Their Achievements At Work. Women of Influence, press release, 1 March 2023, summarising the Tallest Poppy 2023 study. https://www.womenofinfluence.ca/2023/03/01/tps-press-release/
Tall Poppy Syndrome: How The Workforce Is Cutting Ambitious Women Down. Deborah Bulcock. https://www.deborahbulcock.com/tall-poppy-syndrome/
