It exists because of stereotypes about how we expect women and men to behave — women as nurturing and collaborative, men as authoritative, and seemingly no rubric for those who identify as neither — so when people exert characteristics outside of those expectations, they face a penalty.

But as the workplace scholar Joan C. Williams has written in her book “What Works for Women at Work” — and tackled in a recent column — there is an effective way to combat that penalty, and it involves a delicate balance of competence and warmth, of taking those feminine stereotypes and turning them on their head.

She calls it “gender judo.”

There is ample evidence to show that gender judo can work: Venture capitalists are more likely to fund female-led companies if they are framed as being about social good (because women help people!), while women who use “softeners” in conversations about money are less likely to be perceived as crass or demanding.

In her interviews, Professor Williams spoke with women who said they effectively embraced the stereotype of the “office mom” — being helpful around the office (’cause women are helpful!), taking on the administrative tasks, bringing the coffee — in order to offset the times she was firm.

As one former chief executive told her: “I’m warm Ms. Mother 95 percent of the time, so that the 5 percent of the time when I need to be tough, I can be.”

And yet, reading all that brings me back to the likability coach. What if you, like me, just don’t have the energy to engage in all that judo all day long — or the funds to hire someone to teach you how to do it?

As the economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett once told me, it’s not women who are the problem. It’s that we still define leadership in male terms.