Researchers have long been interested in the relationship between implicit achievement, power, and affiliation motives and leadership success. Due to women’s underrepresentation in leadership, little, however, is known about the expression, effects, and evaluations of implicit motives in male versus female CEOs. Thus,scholars call for more research on female business leaders to enhance our understanding of how implicit motives relate to successful leadership. The present research addresses this call and examines the role of implicit motives and gender in the upper echelons. In doing so, my research builds on motive disposition theory and various social psychological theories. I present three original, empirical studies that investigate (1) how male and female leaders differ in their implicit motives; (2) how implicit motives affect the survival of male and female CEOs; and (3) how male and female CEOs with different implicit motives are evaluated by next-generation shareholders. Study 1 and Study 2 are archival studies that analyzed gender-balanced samples of CEOs from publicly-traded companies. These studies used a validated scoring manual to content-code implicit motives from CEO letters. Study 1 showed that CEOs-in-general expressed higher achievement and power than affiliation motivation. Further, female CEOs expressed lower power and higher affiliation motivation than male CEOs. Study 2 found that female and power-motivated CEOs faced an increased turnover risk. Study 3 was an experimental vignette study that examined evaluations of male or female CEOs who displayed power or affiliation motivation in shareholder letters. Analyses showed that affiliation predicted perceived likability, general leader evaluations, and tenure recommendations, while power predicted perceived competence and financial performance ratings. Furthermore, implicit motives and gender interacted to predict perceived likability, general leader evaluations, and tenure recommendations. Together, these studies advance our understanding of how gender and motives relate to successful leadership. Limitations, implications, and future research directions are discussed.